by Dave Flaherty, Westfield At Large City Councilor
Let me start by saying that the Mayor, the Water Department, and every City Councilor want to make sure we do what’s best for this city, and that we provide clean safe drinking water to everyone in town. Nobody is playing politics with people’s health and safety.
A recent article written by former City Councilor Mr. Dondley was clearly erroneous and inflammatory in several ways. Hopefully by now most readers of The Westfield News recognize that Mr. Dondley rarely has anything nice to say about me. Please take his reports and writings with a grain of salt – or a bucket of salt. I won’t harp on his article too much, because I have an important message of my own, but it should be noted that all of the City Councilors have advocated for more funding for maintenance and repairs to our city’s infrastructure. As far as I remember, over the last 10 years, we’ve never cut funding for road construction or the water infrastructure – until this year when the council voted to accept the Mayor’s recommendation for mid-year budget cut to the highway department to help reduce the 6% tax increase that was in the budget that passed in June. I voted to oppose that cut.
Ok, back to the present situation… Honestly, the water supply in Westfield has significant issues – particularly water supplied by the aquifer that lies underneath much of the north side of town. There are pollutants in the water that are not healthy for us in the long-term. This generally affects water customers north of the river. In the last couple of years, the Federal and State government thresholds for certain contaminants have been lowered to a point that caused some of our wells to exceed those limits. Wells have been shut down at various times based on the testing. From what I’ve been told, there are four wells that supply the water to the north side of town: wells #7 & #8 which are adjacent to the air base in the vicinity of East Mountain Country Club, well #2 on Union Street, and well #1 off Holyoke Road. Wells #7 and #8 were shut off about two years ago, well #2 has been on and off over the last year or so and is currently off, and well #1 is currently on. That means that well #1 is currently the only well providing water from the aquifer to the north side of town. Well #1 could very well exceed the parameters in the near future. What then?
The Mayor, Water Department, and City Council have known about, and have been very concerned about these issues for some time. The Mayor and Water Department have been diligently trying to find the best solutions. The city has been in regular contact with the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (who regulates and monitors public water supplies in Massachusettts). I think it’s fair to say that everyone is concerned that if well #1 needs to be shut off, we’d have a much more significant issue on our hands. The Water Department, and their hired outside experts, and DEP, have been working on this for many months. A plan has been developed to install a temporary filter for well #2 ASAP. However even ASAP means maybe June. These things take time to acquire and install. This work will be done regardless of the status of the $13 million bond (there is money left in last year’s $5 million bond authorization).
As for the recent $13 million bond authorization, first, this bond request failed because the Mayor and Water Department team failed to justify the expense to the Finance Committee – whose job it is to look out for the taxpayer’s money. We all want clean water, and we all recognize the severity and time pressures associated with the issue. However, that doesn’t mean we just skip over performing due diligence on a $13 million spending request. The details that were presented to the Finance Committee literally could have fit on the back of a bar napkin. For $13 million, you’d expect detailed plans, budgets, timelines, recommendations from water treatment experts, analysis of options, and ability to answer questions from councilors who are asking questions or researching on behalf of residents and taxpayers who have great concerns. We know the Water Department and the outside consultants have a plan, and we hope they have a plan that will solve the immediate and longer-term issues. However, City Council hasn’t seen it, and we haven’t been able to ask the questions we need to ask to make sure that taxpayer and ratepayer money is being used appropriately. We have no idea if solving this problem is going to cost us $13 million, $18 million, $30 million, or more. We have also heard from other cities across the country that we can’t get reimbursed from the Federal government unless there is an agreement in place before spending the money. This seems like something that should be addressed ASAP. The city taxpayers and ratepayers shouldn’t be on the hook to pay to fix pollution caused by the Federal government.
Second, taking a couple of extra weeks to allow the Finance Committee to do due diligence, and the Mayor and Water Department to fully explain what’s going on, isn’t putting people at further risk – not in any way to minimize the severity of the problems we already face. The existing $5 million approval has sufficient funds to cover the temporary filtration work and a planned back-up interconnect with Springfield. The Water Department told us as much last week. Wells 1 and 2 can provide water for the north side of town, and the interconnect with Springfield can provide back-up water for the south side of town so that the college area doesn’t have problems like they had a couple of years ago with the drought conditions. The vast majority of this $13 million request was for permanent solutions and tank repairs that are many many months out at best case.
Right now this $13 million bond request is dead. The Mayor and Water Department will likely submit another request in the coming weeks. If it’s ready sooner, we could always have a quick special meeting to accept the request and refer it to committees. It will be referred to Finance and/or L&O and those committees will investigate and deliberate and make a recommendation to the full council. The bond takes two readings and nine affirmative votes to pass. If all goes well, a bond authorization could be approved in April, and contracts could be awarded shortly thereafter.
To move this forward, I’ll be asking City Council President Beltrandi to coordinate a roundtable meeting of the whole council, the Mayor, Water Department, outside consultants, Air National Guard, DEP, and other appropriate parties. This would be a great opportunity to get everyone up to date, and to develop a short-term action plan to get the Water Department the funding they need to address these problems ASAP.
In the future, I think the city has to take a very hard look at development and land usage over the aquifer, and land that has water flowing into the aquifer. Councilor Babinski and her team on the north side, and Councilor Swords and O’Connell before her, have been saying this for years. We have to make sure we protect this valuable natural resource for the generations to come. The airbase still uses chemical firefighting foam that is dangerous to humans and animals; some businesses use dangerous fuels or chemicals; truck and car pollutants and road grime run off the roads; and, some businesses and residents casually dump things onto the ground. We have to find way to stop this pollution, and reduce the risks as much as possible.
Some of you have asked me what I do for water. First, I am not a chemist, biologist, or water specialist. I trust the experts to do what it right to provide us clean safe water. However, because of the on and off nature of wells on the north side, we have been buying bottled drinking water at home. At my office downtown, we filter the water because we are located in an older part of the city, and our building is an old manufacturing property. In the future, even with these new filtration systems, we may put in our own filtration system at home. There are miles of pipe and tanks and water management devices between the water supply and my kitchen sink. I think it’s worth a few hundred dollars to make sure we filter out anything we can to provide the cleanest water out of the tap. [email protected]
