Great Barrington — The long-troubled Housatonic Water Works is asking residents to support the town’s acquisition of the company at an upcoming special town meeting, scheduled for Thursday, April 17, at 6 p.m., at Monument Mountain High School.
Resident Sharon Gregory previously filed two separate petitions calling for a special town meeting so that residents could vote on the town purchasing both Housatonic Water Works (HWW) and the Great Barrington Fire District (GBFD) to merge the two water utilities. The first petition asks for the town to acquire GBFD for a sum not to exceed $2 million, while the second asks for the town to acquire HWW for a sum not to exceed $2.3 million.
In a letter posted to the company’s website this week, HWW Treasurer James Mercer wrote that HWW will encourage residents to approve the acquisition of the company and GBFD.
However, while the petition states that the purchase of the company would be for “an amount not to exceed $2.3 million,” Mercer stipulates in his letter, “We fully support this acquisition at a fair market value, which would be negotiated with the town if the proposal passes.” Mercer continues, “Furthermore, we believe that this transition to public ownership under a newly established independent Housatonic Water District, like the Great Barrington Fire District, which has water rate-setting authority and taxing powers, will significantly benefit our community. [The company supports the petitions] because it will unlock resources and structural advantages that a small private utility like HWW cannot access on its own. We have always taken pride in serving you, but we also understand that our community’s water needs have outgrown the small private-company model. By voting for the town to acquire HWW, we can tap into greater opportunities for improvements, funding, and long-term stability for your water service. It is also important that it remain an independent public entity rather than a town department subject to annual budget constraints.”
In his letter, which was sent to customers on March 31, Mercer does not specify a specific selling price for HWW. Back in late October, however, consultants from DPC Engineering LLC, of Longmeadow and Harwich Port, Mass., presented to the town a report that showed the fair market value of HWW’s infrastructure at $2.3 million, but if the town were to acquire the company’s infrastructure, it would have to invest at least $33 million in repairs.
Fire District Commissioner and Chair Walter “Buddy” Atwood has previously stated in interviews and public meetings that GBFD has no interest in acquiring HWW. “We don’t want to take on [HWW’s] debt because there isn’t an easy way to divide the debt up,” Atwood said at a January roundtable with Gregory, hosted by Berkshire Edge contributing columnist Peter Most. “They’re not part of the Fire District, which we can tax. [Merging both systems] would cost us. We’d have to have more employees, and we’d have to do it. We don’t know their system, so we don’t know what the problems are. I believe we have the right number of employees to handle our system. If we’re taking on increasing our system by 50 percent, that’s not going to work. It’s a system we don’t know, and they have a different method of accessing water. It comes from a lake. Our water comes from a shallow well. They’re drawing it out of a lake.”
