FREQUENTLY
ASKED QUESTIONS
ABOUT THE
WATER LINE EXTENSION
(prepared
by supporters
of the waterline extension bond issue)
(submitted
by Zelda Stern; principal author Ralph Bradburd)
At 6:30 p.m. Thursday, December 2nd,
there will be a special town meeting held in the Mt. Greylock Regional High
School gymnasium. Only one issue will
be considered at this meeting – but there has been some confusion and
misunderstanding of what is at stake when the town votes on the warrant to
authorize an $875,000 bond to contribute to the cost of building a water line
that will extend to Mt. Greylock High School.
What are we REALLY voting on
at the Special Town Meeting?
Q: Are we
being asked to vote on December 2nd on a measure that will ADD to
either our tax burden or our water bill burden?
A: No. Quite the contrary. Because the Clark Art Institute, Northern Berkshire Health
Systems (NBHS) and an anonymous donor are willing to contribute funds for the
project, and because the high school has received a $286,000 grant from the
state for the purpose of connecting the school to a town water line, the total
annual cost of the bond will be fully covered by the revenues from providing
water to the high school, the Art Conservation Lab, and the Northern Berkshire
Health Systems facility. There will be
virtually no net increase in expenditures at the high school because, prior to
the perchlorate problem, the school was already incurring costs for testing and
maintaining its wells: the estimate for the increase in our costs over our
current costs is $800 to $1400 per year.
Q: Are we
voting on whether to preserve or not preserve Phelps Knoll?
A: No, we are not.
If the Art Conservation Center is not built on that location, NBHS has
stated clearly that it will build more than 68 homes on that site. The
disruption of the natural beauty of the site, the extent of public access, and
the extent of interference with the high school’s cross-country running and ski
trails will ALL be far greater with the 68+ homes than with the Center.
We may not want
Phelps Knoll to be developed, but voting down the water line will NOT
accomplish that goal. It WILL only make
it more difficult for our children to have clean, safe drinking water at their
school.
Q: Can we just
go on as we have been at our high school?
A: No. First, our high school has a water
contamination problem that is costing it money and administrative time. At present, the high school is incurring
costs both for extensive testing and for bottled water. Second, our high school's current wells, even if they can be
decontaminated, are not in compliance with current DEP requirements. Both wells are too close to the building and
one is too close to our underground fuel oil tank. Currently, the wells are "grandfathered," but if we make
renovations to the school that change the footprint of the building, the wells
will have to be brought into conformity with new regulations. In the absence of the town water line, this
will require drilling new wells and, of course, engaging in ongoing testing. Third, our high school is not in
compliance with current fire suppression codes. When the high school undertakes renovations of its physical
plant, it will be required to install a sprinkler system. The high school wells do not provide sufficient
water volume and pressure for a sprinkler system. If there is no town water line, it will be necessary to install a
pumping station and approximately 300,000 gallons of water storage, either
above or below ground, at a cost that is unlikely to be less than $750,000 and
could be more than $1,000,000.
Q: What kinds
of renovations would trigger the need for a fire suppression system?
A: According
to communications with Michael Card, Williamstown’s Building Inspector, the
“triggering” renovations for new wells could include any of the following:
replacing the ventilation and heating units in the classrooms, renovating the
auditorium, or refurbishing the science laboratories, and depending on cost,
replacing the boilers for the heating system.
In some cases, such as the ventilation system, these are renovations
that we may not long be able to postpone.
(In 2002 the school was cited for having inadequate classroom air flow;
the school did whatever remediation it could in the short run, but problems
with the ventilation system remain. )
Q: Has the
need for new wells and a sprinkler system suddenly been “discovered” at a time
when the town is considering a water line?
A: No.
Although the perchlorate contamination problem is newly discovered, the
high school has known that its wells are non-conforming for several years. The need to install a fire-suppression
sprinkler system was also identified several years ago. The high school engaged a consulting firm in
August 2002 to help with a facilities audit, and this information has been
known at least since that time.
Q: Are we
perhaps passing up a cheaper, or better, alternative to the water line
extension?
A: The
answer at the present time appears to be “No.”
The Waubeeka Springs line
that extends to Five Corners is a six-inch line (and a very old one) and is not
adequate for the purposes of a fire suppression system at the school. Therefore, to use Waubeeka Springs water, a
new line would have to be built to the spring itself, along with one or more
pumping stations, and given the distance to the spring--over 10,000 feet--the
cost of that option would be more than $1.5
million, and likely closer to $2 million, not including the $750,000 to
$1 million cost of the required water storage capacity and pumping facility for
the fire suppression system. Further,
the Weatherbee offer does not extend to the Clark or to NBHS, and therefore the
entire cost would have to be carried by the high school district. In addition,
it is not clear that the offer from Pam Weatherbee to provide water to the high
school from Waubeeka Springs is one that she has the authority to honor: it
appears that there are 26 families with deeded water rights to the water from
that same source, and although Pam Weatherbee owns the land on which the spring
is located, there is some dispute as to whether she can provide any water at
all to the high school without permission from a majority of those 26
families. In the case of water from the
Sabot family, the current proposed
site for a well is roughly 9000 feet from the high school, and therefore the
cost of the water line and the underground water storage capacity necessary for
fire suppression purposes would not be likely to be much different from the
cost of the Waubeeka Springs option.
It has also been suggested that the school district try to obtain water
from Northern Berkshire Health Systems
(NBHS). There are two problems with
this “solution.” First, as Town Manager
Peter Fohlin stated at the November 17th Selectmen Meeting, NBHS has
stated that it is not willing to take on the responsibility of providing water
to the high school on a permanent basis; and second, NBHS provision of potable
water to the high school does not offer a solution to the need for water to
meet the needs of a fire suppression system.
Digging a pond is another
suggested alternative to installing underground or aboveground water tanks.
There are several serious problems with this idea, including the necessity of
having clean and clear water to run through the sprinkler system (implying need
to filter and de-weed the pond water and therefore to have tanks to store the
de-weeded and filtered water), that make this option infeasible to
implement.
Q: Are there
any other sources of water that will meet the school’s needs for potable water
and water for fire suppression purposes?
A: The high
school could attempt to dig new wells elsewhere on its grounds, but this is not
an inexpensive proposition. First, the
cost of digging and installing new, conforming wells capable of providing
sufficient water for the high school’s peak daily use has been estimated to be
between $75,000 and $100,000 per well.
Second, there is some risk that the new wells could suffer from
perchlorate contamination. Third,
because current state regulations require that new wells be surrounded by a
buffer area in which no activities other than water resource management are
permitted, it is likely that digging new wells would require that the school’s
playing fields be relocated. Fourth, assuming that the wells are free from
perchlorate contamination, the school would have to incur the $3,200 annual
costs for upkeep and testing that it had to incur prior to the perchlorate
problem. And finally, installing new
wells would still leave the school with the cost of installing the water tanks
and pumping station necessary to provide the volume of pressurized water
required for a fire suppression system.
It is important to note that these same costs, plus problems relating to
liability, would exist in the case of every possible source of well water
located near the school but not on school property.
Q: If the town
water line is not extended to the high school at the present time, wouldn’t the
state government and Lanesboro pick up some of the costs of the new wells and
the fire suppression system when the time comes to do the renovations at MGRHS,
and therefore aren’t the costs to the town of the new wells, water tanks and
pumping station being exaggerated?
A: Lanesboro will indeed have to fund one third of
the cost not covered by the state when any renovations are done. It is possible, but it is not guaranteed,
that the state will pick up part of the cost.
But even if the state does fund part of the cost, where will the balance
of the money come from? Lanesboro is at
its Prop 2 ½ levy limit and cannot raise taxes above current levels without an
override vote. Absent an extraordinary
amount of new growth over the next few years, Williamstown also would require
an override vote to fund its part of the cost.
If either one of these votes fails to pass, the high school would be
required to make still further cuts in faculty and programming in order to meet
its water needs.
Q: Will
construction of the new water line, which is a 16 inch line, overload the
current sewer line or somehow cause it to fail?
A: Construction of a 16-inch waterline will not cause the sewer
line to fail.
According to the report by environmental and engineering firm Camp
Dresser and Mckee (CDM), which was sent to Tim Kaiser, Williamstown’s Director
of Public Works, and reviewed by engineer Vincent Guntlow of Guntlow and Associates, extending the water line would neither strain the
capacity of the existing sewer nor overwhelm it. This conclusion is based on the following facts and projections:
Of all the parts of the system, only the
pumps that pump sewage into the force main come close to operating near
capacity. Those pumps can convey 164
GPM into the force main, or roughly 25% more sewage into the force main than
they do at current peak use, which occurs at midday.
At the hours of the night that the 55 GPM
Sweetwood and Conservation Lab sewage will be flowing through the line, the
current average flow is only 20 GPM, or less than one-sixth of the peak
flow. This means that during the period
in which the sewage from the Conservation Lab and the Sweetwood expansion will
be flowing through the line, the pumps that feed the force main will be pumping
75 GPM, only 46% of the pumps’ capacity and well below the 79% of capacity at
which the pumps have operated during peak hours every day ever since the sewer
line was built.
The LINKED
GRAPH shows the sewage flow analysis performed by CDM as a series of hourly
readings connected by a solid line. It
also shows, by the heavy line, (drawn by Ralph Bradburd), the flow rate by hour
if 55 GPM of sewage were to be added to the normal hourly flow rate between the
hours of 11:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. It is clear from the graph that the
additional sewage will not strain the system or cause the current system to
fail.
Q: Why not
build a smaller water line out to the high school? Why build a 16” water line?
A: We will have to install a fire suppression system
at the high school when we undertake significant renovations there. That fire suppression system must be able to
provide large volumes of water per minute under pressure. The 16” water line will provide a sufficient
volume of water under pressure to eliminate the need for underground water
tanks and a pumping station at the high school. The next smallest size water line capable of providing the
required volume of water per minute is not a standard size and would actually
cost more than the 16” water line in the current plan.
Q: Will
constructing a new water line lead to substantial new development on the
beautiful Route 7 corridor?
A: This is clearly a critical question. Answering it requires that we make a careful
distinction between potential new development along Route 7 and any EXTRA
development that will be made possible by the water line extension. A close examination of the lots along Route
7 from the Captain's Table to the high school reveals that, as long as current
zoning is not invalidated by the addition of the new water line, an issue to
which we return below, there are few lots that are not now developable that
will become so with the addition to the water line.
The water line currently extends to The Captain's
Table, and the proposed water line only extends to the high school; therefore
no lots north of The Captain's Table or south of the high school are affected
by the new water line and should not be counted as part of any impact of the
new water line. (The sewer line already extends to the high
school.) Zoning along the part of Route
7 affected by the water line requires 200' of frontage and 2.5 acre lots. This by itself limits the number of
lots. Furthermore, many parcels or
parts of parcels that appear developable along Route 7 are not in fact developable
for practical purposes either because they are wetlands, steep ridges or
cliffs, or because they require a bridge over Hemlock Brook the stream
(requiring special DEP permission and very substantial cost), because they do
not meet setback requirements or because they are conservation lands or have
already been placed in a status that precludes development.
To be sure, there are some lots that are
developable. However, these lots are
developable right now using wells as
a water source. Given the relatively modest cost of putting in a well for
household use, there is almost no extra
development that will be made possible by the water line extension unless
the addition of the town water line invalidates the current zoning requirements
of 2 ½ acres and 200 feet road frontage.
For a discussion of the water line extension and zoning in the Route 7 Corridor, see separate document entitled “Would a new water line, by itself, threaten 2 ½ acre zoning in the Route 7 Corridor?”