LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Don't Ignore Acton's Water Quality

Our Water District Commissioner’s seat election and Water District Annual meeting matter this year more than at any recent time. We are at the very start of spending over $40 Million in added new spending over the next 30 years to treat water that comes from the same sources we have been using for the last 30.  Article 16 on this year’s Acton Water District annual meeting warrant will fund the engineering for the $12 Million South Acton Water Treatment Plant (SATP). This plant, another future treatment plant for West Acton, and the operation of our all 3 water treatment plants will make our water permanently and substantially more expensive. 

In and of itself, this would be OK if it provided substantially improved water safety. Unfortunately, even with these three treatment plants on line, we are still at risk of drinking unregulated compounds which will someday be regulated and considered hazardous. This has happened before, and is happening now. Can anyone say that it will not happen in the future? 

Our drinking water comes from shallow aquifers which can potentially receive contamination from hundreds of uncontrolled residential and commercial leech fields and from 200 years of legacy industrial use.  We are at constant risk of needing to deal with a new contaminant from one of these sources or from an accident on a nearby road.  Of great concern to me and others, are the pharmaceuticals that many town residents currently use and then, 48 hours later, flush away.  The leech fields of hundreds of homes, and that of the Acton Sewerage treatment plant are in the Zone 2 protection areas for some of our wells.  Are we consuming second hand pharmaceuticals?  We don’t know, principally because they are not regulated.

There is a better way however:  for about the same total cost, we can switch over to buying our Water from the MWRA system in Marlborough.   Doing so would bring us water from the protected Quabbin, Ware River, and Wachusett watersheds. This option has not been give adequate consideration of review by the district and now is the best time to do so.   

The MWRA has 85 Million Gallons per day of excess capacity and has strong interest in finding new client towns.  The MWRA main treatment plant is less than 15 miles from our distribution system, a relatively short distance compared to the 120 miles of water mains that we have in Acton.

I am asking that the Acton Water District invest in a detailed study of the long term cost of this option and bring the choice back to our voters at the ballot.  This must be started now, before the South Acton Treatment plant is built, in order to have comparable total cost.

This new path will not be easy or fast, it will likely take us 5-7 years to be fully on line with the MWRA, with extensive negotiations and permitting needed to complete the effort.   

This compares with a 2 year time frame to complete the SATP, and then another 5-7 years to plan and build the anticipated West Acton Treatment Plant. But now is the time to pause our incremental treatment efforts and look forward at a solution that can keep providing excellent water for the next hundred years. 

If on the other hand, you are willing to pause this project, and take a full and detailed look at the prospect of switching to MWRA water.  I ask both for your support in the election on March 26 and for you to attend the water district annual meeting on March 20 at the Acton Memorial Library at 7:30 pm and vote “no” on article 16 on the Water district Annual Meeting Warrant. 

Thank you,

Paul Malchodi

Shady Lane

Candidate for Water District Commissioner