To the editor:
In the ongoing conversation about housing in the southern Berkshires, we keep asking how to expand our housing stock without sacrificing the rural character that defines our towns.
A fair and equitable path forward is the thoughtful expansion of public utilities—town sewer, town water, and publicly available gas or district energy—within and adjacent to our existing village centers.
Infrastructure determines destiny.
When housing relies solely on private wells and septic systems, development is limited to large lots. That drives up land consumption, fragments forests and farmland, and makes moderately priced housing nearly impossible to build. It pushes growth outward, into precisely the landscapes we claim to want to preserve.
Public utilities change that equation.
Municipal sewer and water allow smaller footprints, accessory apartments, multi-family housing, and mixed-use buildings that fit naturally into our historic downtowns. Extending energy infrastructure lowers long-term heating costs for residents. These are prerequisites for workforce housing that teachers, nurses, tradespeople, and young families can realistically afford.
There is also a public health dimension we should not ignore. Across parts of the Berkshires, homeowners continue to grapple with contaminated or compromised water—whether from naturally occurring contaminants, aging systems, or legacy environmental impacts. Expanding reliable municipal water systems would not only enable housing, it would quietly resolve many of these ongoing private burdens. It is a tonic for problems we are currently asking individual homeowners to solve alone.
Equity matters. If we say we support housing opportunity but restrict infrastructure to a limited footprint, we are effectively deciding who gets to build—and who gets to live—here.
Done properly, infrastructure expansion protects the countryside by concentrating development where roads, schools, and emergency services already exist. It strengthens the village model that has sustained this region for centuries.
Growth without infrastructure is sprawl.
Infrastructure without growth is stagnation.
The southern Berkshires deserve neither.
Dan Alden
Mill River
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