WESTFIELD – Residents of a Union Street condominium requested the Water Commission to consider granting a waiver from a policy prohibiting residents connected to city water from also having a private well.
The Union Park Condos Association was already in the process of installing an artesian well to provide water for lawn irrigation when the Water Resource Department issued an order to cease that work even though a permit for the well was issued by the Health Department.
The residents are seeking to install the well for lawn irrigation because of the cost of using city water for that purpose and the fact that the facility does not have a separate water meter for outdoor water usage.
Dave Costello of the Connecticut Valley Artesian Well Company, Inc., the firm hired by the condo association to install the irrigation well questioned the Water Commission policy and it’s authority to impose that policy.
Public Works Director Dave Billips said the policy is derived from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Regulations (CMR) promulgated to protect public water supplies.
Charles Darling of the Water Resource Division said the concern is that there could be a potential of a future cross connection between the city’s water and a source of water of an unknown quality being pulled from a private well.
Darling said that a different policy pertains to commercial water customers because those systems are inspected annually to ensure that back-flow devices are operating correctly to prevent water from flowing back into the city’s distribution system
Costello argued that if a cross connection is not in place, the commission’s CMR-based prohibition against having both public and private water is not justified. Costello said that Easthampton and Westfield are the only communities in the region which have the public water/private well policy prohibiting both systems on residential property.
Billips argued that the city has more than 13,000 water customers and that the vast majority of water users are residents and that the policy is in place to protect those residents, including the condo residents.
”Westfield has the most complex water system in the state because we have both surface water from the Granville Reservoir and well water from the Barnes Aquifer,” Billips said. “That’s not us telling you that, it’s how the DEP (state Department of Environmental Protection) classifies our system.”
“We don’t have the manpower to inspect and control residential water users,” Billips said.
Costello suggested that the condo be allowed to install a back-flow device and treated as a commercial customer. Costello also raised the issue that the condo is considered a commercial property by some city departments because it is a multi-unit facility.
Commission Chairman Ron Cole and Commissioner Matthew Barnes voted to seek an opinion from the Law Department to clarify the status of the condo complex as being either a residential property or a commercial property and to continue its consideration of a policy waiver at its September 1 session.
