Housatonic — The troubled private water company serving the Housatonic section of Great Barrington has declined a request from the town to provide financial relief to customers affected by tainted and discolored water.
At the request of customers of Housatonic Water Works at an April 25 meeting, the selectboard wrote a letter to HWW treasurer Jim Mercer requesting the company “offer bottled water options and/or reimbursements to customers impacted by the most recent HAA5 exceedances and for customers in areas that are frequently impacted by roily water.”
HWW customers have had to contend with roily water caused by hydrant flushing and excessive levels of manganese, a mineral that occurs naturally in rocks and soil and is often found in smaller amounts in ground and surface water.
More recently discovered was the presence of a potentially cancer-causing compound, HAA5, caused by the company’s disinfection process. The company did release testing results from the first quarter of this year indicating a drop in the compounds, though the levels remain higher than those considered safe by regulators.
Second quarter results released by Mercer this week showed an improvement from the same period last year, but were still higher than allowable by the state Department of Environmental Protection.
MassDEP told Mercer in March that his company had failed to adequately notify the department and the public of the presence of HAA5, and failed to report the analytical results of the contaminants and of the monitoring period, as required by state drinking water regulations.
In his letter to HWW, Town Manager Mark Pruhenski also asked Mercer to consider offering filtration systems to affected customers. Dozens of HWW customers have complained of rusty-colored water and have said they’ve been forced to purchase expensive filtration systems to treat water so that it can be used freely to bathe and wash clothes in.
Mercer politely declined, noting that HWW is bound by rules and regulations set by the state Department of Public Utilities and that “there are no provisions in these filings for the accommodations sought.”
“We share our customers’ frustration with the colored water situation and have been diligently working with our water chemists and engineers to develop long-term solutions,” Mercer wrote.
Meanwhile, town residents Sharon Gregory and Denise Forbes have been conducting a survey of HWW customers asking customers if they or members of their families have “suffered from cancers or environmental illnesses” such as Crohn’s Disease or ulcerative colitis.
The group has sent a letter to Gov. Charlie Baker and circulated a petition that has now been signed by roughly 1,200 people. The petition asks for state help in transferring the private ownership of HWW to the town of Great Barrington.
The petition further calls for HWW to be taken through eminent domain, “converting it to a quasi-governmental organization with an independent board and oversight,” and asked for a moratorium on additional fees and rate increases, which would need approvals by the state Department of Public Utilities.
After fielding complaints too numerous to count, the Great Barrington Selectboard commissioned two engineering firms to assess the condition and value of the system. AECOM, an infrastructure consulting group, recommended improvements to the HWW system that would cost more than $30 million — a number that Mercer disputes but that an AECOM engineer termed “ugly.”
Town Manager Mark Pruhenski has laid out four possible scenarios for town action: 1) the town acquires HWW and operates it as an enterprise fund; 2) the town acquires HWW and hands the system over to an independent water district serving HWW’s existing customer base; 3) the town acquires HWW and “works with the Fire District to potentially merge those two systems”; 4) or, in Pruhenski’s words, “the status quo, but with the town playing a more active role than it has in the past.”
The Great Barrington Fire District is a quasi-public organization that provides drinking water to the rest of the town outside Housatonic. On its website the town of Great Barrington has created a page with links to important documents and correspondences related to the company.
Meanwhile, HWW will hold, via Zoom, a public information meeting Thursday, June 16 at 6:30 p.m. concerning the water company’s manganese removal pilot study. The link to the Zoom meeting can be found here:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86973897474?pwd=aEc4eEV5RXp3eC9WYTdRR3FsSFJIUT09
Short Link:
https://bit.ly/3xqKMew
Passcode: 1780
Phone: 1 (929) 205 6099
Dial-in, voice-only: 1 (929) 205-6099
Webinar ID: 869 7389 7474
Passcode: 1780
