Four Massachusetts lawmakers are telling the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority to pull back a request that would let it draw 20 million more gallons of water per day from the Quabbin and Wachusett system, according to the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, arguing the agency wants approval before anyone can say exactly who would get the water. The MWRA is reviewing the demand but has not agreed to withdraw the application.
Lawmakers Say No Town Is Even Waiting on the Water
The letter, sent Oct. 21, came from Northampton state Sen. Jo Comerford along with Sen. Jake Oliveira of Ludlow and Reps. Aaron Saunders of Belchertown and Susannah Whipps of Athol, according to wbjournal.com. Comerford said the group acted because the political and environmental risk felt too large to ignore. “The stakes are so high, we wanted to do every single human thing we could to try to prevent this from happening,” she said, as reported in the Boston Herald. Comerford also argued the request lacks a concrete destination. “There isn’t a named party, a city or town waiting on this water as part of this application,” she said, per the Herald’s reporting.
The lawmakers contend the MWRA’s approach conflicts with the 1983 Interbasin Transfer Act, which critics say requires a distinct receiving community to be identified before any transfer can be approved. The MWRA, for its part, has pointed to Section 4.10 of its regulations, which its own public notice says allows a regional water supply system to have donor-basin approval criteria evaluated separately from the criteria governing where the water ultimately goes, according to mwra.com. It remains unresolved how the state will reconcile those two readings of the law.
MWRA Says It's Reviewing, Not Backing Down
The agency has not committed to dropping the application. “We are reviewing the letter and look forward to continuing this conversation,” the MWRA said, according to statehousenews.com. The same outlet reports the extra water is meant to support multiple communities seeking admission to the MWRA system, with most of the interest coming from eastern Massachusetts. The Water Resources Commission, which holds authority over transfers of water outside their basin of origin under the Interbasin Transfer Act, as laid out by the Massachusetts Office of Water Resources, extended public comment on the proposal through Wednesday, Oct. 28. Officials said a draft decision was planned for fall or early winter, followed by a public hearing and a commission vote, and that the panel’s next meeting was set for Nov. 12, as reported by the Worcester Business Journal.
Comerford described the backlash in her part of the state as intense. “I think it’s red hot out here in western and north central Massachusetts,” she said, per the same statehousenews.com account. That temperature showed up in person at a Sept. 30 hearing in Belchertown, where nearly 200 community members urged the commission to reject the MWRA’s proposal, the outlet reported.
The Numbers Behind the East-West Divide
The MWRA says the Quabbin-Wachusett-Ware system carries a designated safe yield of 300 million gallons per day, and that its modeling found the extra 20 million gallons would produce only minimal impacts on reservoir elevations, storage, downstream flows and wetlands, according to the Lowell Sun. The Quabbin Reservoir sat at about 78.5% capacity as of late September, the newspaper reported, and it has been classified in “Below Normal” status since February, a condition the MWRA expected to persist for roughly a year. Average system-wide demand is about 200 million gallons per day, and the proposed increase would amount to about 10% above today’s average withdrawals, the Sun noted.
Western Massachusetts isn’t the only region negotiating over MWRA water. Weymouth’s proposed withdrawal has been scaled back from an earlier peak-day request of 8.84 million gallons per day to 5.5 million gallons, while Wayland is seeking up to 3.5 million gallons per day, per the same Lowell Sun report. Sherborn’s North Sherborn Water and Sewer District is pursuing a separate project with estimated demand of about 80,000 gallons per day. According to wamc.org, Sherborn’s request is before the commission directly, while Wayland, Weymouth and Natick are moving through the state’s MEPA environmental review process as they seek water from the MWRA system.
Not every watershed advocate has drawn a hard line against the plan. wwlp.com reported that Friends of the Quabbin, a group focused on the reservoir’s protection, had not taken a formal vote opposing the water-draw plan, even as regional lawmakers pressed for its withdrawal.
