To the editor:
Fred Clark’s January 6 Letter to the Editor “Benefits of Housatonic Water” is timely in that it opens up discussion about the advisability of installing whole-house filtration in homes serviced by Housatonic Water Works (HWW). With the availability of public and private funds to finance the approximately $2,000 price tag, we are in a position to choose.
Every HWW ratepayer has a story. Fred’s story happens to be one of the happier ones. Oddly, he is a few houses just north of mine and, like the houses just south of me, has no real complaints. Meanwhile, there is a stretch of five homes where my neighbors and I have had to seek access to clean water elsewhere. Our story is not so happy.
My story goes back five years to first receiving HWW advisories about elevated levels of manganese. In the summers of 2022, 2023, and 2024, discolored water was consistently the color of coffee, not tea. The summer of 2024 was the worst, with 90 days straight of water filled with sediment and odor staining my fixtures and clothing. There was no choice for me: If I wanted to keep my sanity and protect my property and maybe wash a head of lettuce or have friends for dinner, I had to clean the water myself.
By installing whole-house filtration, I joined a growing number of HWW ratepayers who had done the research to select a filtering system that would target sediment, manganese, haloacetic acids, and other chemicals as the water entered my home. In 2025, I could live like a normal person again.
Fred argues that a better solution, in the short term, is to make every effort to bring the DPU-mandated green sand filtration on ine in the HWW system. I don’t know how Fred expects this to be accomplished when HWW has delayed the installation from May 2025 to May 2026, then to July 2026, now to an “undetermined” date—the task has eluded us so far. It is not just “unfortunate that HWW has dragged its feet.” As we have watched the utility’s steady deterioration, I cannot rely on Fred’s assurances that “the company is making an effort to upgrade their practices.” The Department of Environmental Protection declared a State of Water Emergency on December 24. That Christmas Eve surprise follows a long list of violations and fines for non-compliance over the years.
I do agree with Fred that a merger of the two water utilities makes sense. I have tried, since 2022, to help our community come out from under this failed monopoly. Along the way, I learned that regionalization of utilities was a cost-effective solution to rehabilitate aged water systems across the country. He is right: Our public water provider would be eligible for water grants and low interest loans. We would also be in a position to receive assistance and training in the operation and management of the utility from public and non-profit private agencies. But all of this is a very long way off.
I don’t agree with Fred that every household will require filtration because not every home is affected. I founded the Housatonic Filtration Initiative so that affected households, like mine, could have clean water, like mine. I receive plenty of criticism that whole-house filtration is a “Band-Aid, a waste of money, or it’s letting the utility off the hook.” I agree that ultimately it is the responsibility of a utility to deliver a quality product. But more than a “Band-Aid,” it is an interim measure to provide clean, safe water to our neighbors while we wait out the fate of the utility and raise the assessed $30 million to bring it up to speed.
It is hard for people to imagine what it is like when they have not experienced my story and stories like mine. When filtering a home is an immediate solution and the price tag is a fraction of the cost of upgrading the utility, the result is priceless.
Donna Jacobs
Great Barrington
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