MWRA PROPOSES TO SELL MORE WATER

The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA), which provides water to the metropolitan Boston area, wants to expand its service area and to market water to communities that it has identified as potentially "water short." MWRA has identified some 22 communities, in addition to several communities already in the process of joining the MWRA's Quabbin Reservoir system. Because the new communities would need to tie in through MWRA existing infrastructure, most are located in eastern MA in the Boston Harbor, Ipswich, Charles and SUASCO basins. The towns in the Charles River Watershed are Franklin, Holliston, Medway and Milford. Click here to view the list of communities identified by MWRA as potential new customers.

The MWRA proposal to market water in eastern MA is a major shift from existing practice and raises a host of important issues, policy questions and concerns. Historically, MWRA system expansion has been limited to communities with contaminated water supplies.

While CRWA is not per se against the sale of additional water, it does oppose sales for the sake of MWRA revenues only, with no planning or criteria in place to guide those sales, or to control the growth impacts that importing millions of gallons of water into eastern MA will cause. CRWA believes that before water is marketed, there must be full analysis and public review of the environmental impacts and required mitigation within the larger framework of the water and smart growth policies that the state has adopted. The mechanism for this careful, comprehensive review is the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act.

The marketing of water was first proposed to help alleviate MWRA's fiscal problems (which will begin to decline in 2012 due to decreasing debt service on MWRA bonds) and to provide rate-payer relief for MWRA member communities. MWRA is now emphasizing the environmental benefits of importing water into hydrologically-stressed basins, such as the Ipswich, where the upper half of the river regularly dries up in the summer, or the headwaters of the Charles. But there will be little environmental benefit if local groundwater supplies in these stressed areas are not curbed at the same time and if the additional water drives more sprawl and development in the wrong places. Stoughton, upon joining the MWRA several years ago, experienced an explosion in commercial, and particularly retail, growth. The Metropolitan Area Planning Council, the area planning organization, and Conservation Law Foundation have both expressed concerns about the growth and development impacts of the MWRA's proposal. There is nothing in the Interbasin Transfer Act, which governs water transfers between basins, or the MWRA's Admission Policy, that would serve to mitigate these types of impacts.

Marketing of water also runs counter to the 2004 MA Water Policy, which strives to keep water local, to have municipalities live within their water budgets, to "promote development strategies consistent with sustainable water resource management" and to protect and restore fish and wildlife habitat. Water conservation, as opposed to alternative water sources, is the first order of preference and the state has developed new water conservation standards designed to reduce water use and to promote its wise use.

Downstream releases from MWRA's reservoirs for fisheries and aquatic habitat are also a concern. CRWA believes that a Task Force of fisheries experts should be convened to scope the necessary studies for determining adequate releases before MWRA markets additional water.

Click here to read CRWA's comments and those of 22 other environmental groups and individuals to the Chair of the MWRA Board of Directors on the MWRA's proposed sale of water to new communities.

Read the January 3, 2007 letter from the outgoing Secretary of the Executive Office of Environmental Affairs Robert Golledge regarding MWRA expansion. Secretary Golledge recognizes the MWRA's stewardship responsibility to manage the Quabbin-Wachusett water resources under its control for the greater good of the Commonwealth. He points to the growth impacts of MWRA water and sewer expansion and the need to integrate such decisions with the state's environmental, economic and societal goals.

At the end of 2007, MassDEP renewed the MRWA's registration to withdraw a total of 166,805 million gallons of water annually from the Chicopee and Nashua basins under the Water Management Act. Read the Ware registration for the Chicopee basin, permitting an average daily withdrawal of 278 million gallons, and the Clinton registration for the Nashua basin, permitting an average daily withdrawal of 179 million gallons. For the first time the registrations impose conservation standards to reduce residential use and water lost in the distribution system.

MWRA's PowerPoint presentation and its staff report on the sale of water from June 2006 are available on the MWRA's website at http://www.mwra.com/01news/2006/060906WtrNotice.htm

For more information, check out the following links:

• 2004 Water Policy Task Force Report
• 2006 MA Water Conservation Standards (PDF)
• List of communities in proximity to MWRA that may have water deficits
• Massachusetts Water Resources Authority website