Let's not rush to spend $3M on treating Belmont water

To The Daily Sun,

For the following reasons, I am writing to urge voters in the Town of Belmont to vote NO on ARTICLE # 2 of the Town Warrant on March 12, which asks us to raise $3,100,000 to treat our public water supply for iron and manganese:

I recently learned that our Town of Belmont has hired Underwood Engineering Company to study a problem we are having with the quality of our town water supply. I was very surprised to find that in April of last year the town initiated this action and there was no public announcement of any kind to the towns' people until January of this year, when a public hearing was held which we only heard about after the fact. Only one member of our town went to that public hearing. At the town's Deliberative Session on February 2, when each article in the Town Warrant was discussed, I asked questions about how the engineers proposed removing the iron and manganese from the town’s water supply. However, there was no one from Underwood Engineering present to make a presentation to the town or answer questions about the process.

The town fathers want to spend $3 million without sufficient public notice, discussion or explanation about this serious proposal so that people can understand the alternatives available and the need for the project. I made a motion at the deliberative session to table the article until next year but that motion died because no-one seconded the motion. My intent was to give the town an extra year to seriously study and present to the townspeople all the information to vote with intelligence on this water proposal. It seemed that more town staff than the public were present at that meeting. You would think that the taxpayers of this town would be interested, first of all in their water supply, and secondly, how the cost of $3 million will affect their property taxes.

I did not get discouraged and continued looking into the matter with some success. As a licensed engineer, I contacted Underwood Engineering to find out what the proposed process was that would remove the iron and manganese. I have to give the engineers a lot of credit, they wrote a very good report and the discussion I had with them was very informative.

To help people understand the proposed process, one could say that it is similar to a water conditioner that you might have in your home if you have a drilled well, but the difference is that it is designed to handle 200,000 gallons of water a day and it is much more sophisticated and complicated. A building in the range of 40 x 50 feet would be required to house the equipment and material that would be used to remove the iron and manganese. The cost to maintain the system is approximately $42,000 a year over and above the initial costs and that number will increase with time.

To determine if the current proposal is really the best way to go, you have to ask whether there are other alternatives to chemically treating our water supply. Another alternative is to find a water supply that has no iron or manganese and can meet the town’s needs. I mentioned this to the engineer at Underwood during our discussion and he agreed that the best solution would be a well without any impurities, if available.

It so happens that there is a well that Underwood Engineers and the town of Belmont should investigate that was professionally drilled years ago. It has been tested by the state and found to be free of iron and manganese and it has the quality and quantity needed by the town. (In case you are asking, NO, neither I nor my family own or have any interest in this well or the land that surrounds it.)

Waiting a year to vote on the water supply gives the town sufficient time to explore the possibility of utilizing a new well that doesn’t require treatment and assessing the costs of different alternatives. With sufficient investigation, other wells might be discovered in town which could offer further alternatives. It would be worth the wait to come up with a better plan as neither iron or manganese have the risk that some chemicals might have when added to our water supply.

George Condodemetraky

Belmont