Great Barrington — The long-in-the-works financial evaluation of Housatonic Water Works (HWW) will be presented at a public meeting on Monday, October 28, at 6 p.m., at Monument Mountain Regional High School. The meeting will be held in person and virtually via Zoom.
At a Selectboard meeting in December, Chair Steve Bannon announced that the town would investigate acquiring the long-troubled company. The board subsequently instructed Town Manager Mark Pruhenski to conduct a study on the potential costs for the acquisition and operation of HWW, along with the potential revenues, expenses, and capital needs for the water system that would be operated on an enterprise-fund basis.
At a January Selectboard meeting, Pruhenski said that the town hired DPC Engineering from Longmeadow and Harwich Port, Mass., to evaluate the potential operation and acquisition of HWW. The total cost for the study is estimated at $26,235.
At a Selectboard meeting In July, Pruhenski said that the study was behind schedule in its completion due to the company’s lack of cooperation with DPC Engineering.
During a Zoom-based public meeting on Wednesday, October 16, Housatonic Water Works Treasurer James Mercer said in regards to the study:
We have provided all the information we could provide to the town of Great Barrington. They were looking for updated financials. Those are in our annual return, which is public information. When the town mentioned that we were not cooperative, what they were referring to was the fact that we would not provide personal information on customers, their names, addresses, and usage. We provide the total usage and the total revenues, and those are in our annual return. The MassDEP annual statistical report shows the number of gallons pumped every year, so they have all the information they need.
During the Selectboard meeting on Monday, October 21, Pruhenski said that DPC Engineering’s report was “the most critical piece of the process” in determining whether the town should purchase HWW. “We really can’t ask voters to consider acquiring the water system without knowing how much it will cost to not only purchase it but also operate it in the future,” Pruhenski said. “No decisions will be made [during the October 28 meeting], but we should have enough information at that point to at least proceed.”
During the Selectboard comments portion towards the end of the October 21 meeting, Selectboard member Ben Elliott said he hoped there would be strong resident turnout for the presentation. “As a member of this board, and as a Housatonic Water Works customer, the incident of the company not releasing their manganese testing in July is evidence and a kind of action that has immediate impact,” Elliott said. “I know multiple families in Housatonic with children under the age of one. The reason why we love living in this town is because it’s a great place to raise your family. To have a utility put your children in danger is unacceptable. I’m really hopeful that next week is the start of a process that can bring affordable, clean water to people listening.”
Selectboard member Eric Gabriel told the board he is very upset with Berkshire Superior Court’s ruling, made hours before the October 21 Selectboard meeting, which prevents the town’s Board of Health from enforcing an Order to Correct against HWW. “I got the news right before the meeting, and it’s very upsetting to me,” Gabriel said. “I just needed a little bit to breathe it out before I said something I’d regret. Between that and last week’s meeting, or whatever that show was that Housatonic Water Works put on, [the ruling] is another disappointing moment. The fact is that they’ve been denying us information the whole time. Every time that the town has asked for information for these studies, they haven’t been forthcoming with it. They didn’t send out notices [about high manganese levels] which put children at risk. Water should be a public entity. This is what happens when it is private: It’s dollars over human lives.”
“I was at the same [meeting], and I was outraged and couldn’t believe it,” Vice Chair Leigh Davis added. “I did raise two points [during the meeting]: I asked where the $350,000 grant that Housatonic Water Works received [is going], and if it would affect the rate that customers would end up paying.”
Davis was referring to a $350,000 grant that HWW received back in June from the Emerging Contaminants for Small or Disadvantaged Communities grant program funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill. The grant is administered by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection.
“[Mercer said that] it would be applied to these rates, so we’ll see how much relief that we can get for customers,” Davis said. “The second point I raised to [Mercer] was [asking if the company] applied to the revolving loan program that is available to private water companies. He did not say, and he said he was not aware of [the program]. I will be sharing information about the program with him, and the hope is that they can tap into this fund to help ratepayers.”
