Water Dept.*

Farmers protest sudden end to lower water rates

January 9, 2020

By Alice Waugh

The Water Department recently stopped allowing rate caps for agricultural users of town water, but after farmers were taken by surprise and objected, officials decided this week to study the matter further.

The issue of water rates is a sore subject for the town. To help pay for an array of capital projects and new equipment, residents voted to approve bonding totaling about $2 million at Town Meetings in March and November 2019, and the department has been in a financial and staffing crisis for some time.

Because of the expenditures, water bills went up by 25% last year, and another significant increase is expected when next year’s rates are set. The Water Commission plans to propose the new rates on January 21 and hold a public hearing on February 4.

Everyone who uses town-supplied water must pay according to how much water they use each quarter. There are three usage tiers: 0–20,000 gallons, 20,001–40,000 gallons, and 40,001 gallons or more. As an incentive to conserve water, the fee climbs steeply from one tier to the next: $5.08 per 1,000 gallons for users in tier 1, rising to $10.71 for tier 2 and $25.03 for tier 3. Local farms can use more than 100,000 gallons per quarter in the growing season.

In keeping with Lincoln’s agricultural character, former Water Department Superintendent Greg Woods (who left about two years ago) capped the rate at Tier 1 for some farming operations in Lincoln. The policy was on an informal case-by case basis; Lincoln does not have a written policy regarding rates for agricultural water use.

Water Department Superintendent MaryBeth Wiser drafted a proposal with suggested criteria for an agricultural rate last year, but in June 2019, the commission voted not to adopt it and to discontinue the water rate caps for farms. Water customers were notified in their July bills that farms would no longer receive special treatment and would be charged according to water usage the same as everyone else starting October 1, 2019. Since farms use a lot of water, the change could mean added costs amounting to tens of thousands of dollars a year. The only alternative is to pay for digging a private well, which can cost upwards of $20,000.

Although the notice went out in July, some farmers didn’t realize a change had been made until they got their water bills in November, as there was no outreach or publicity from the Water Department aside from the notice in the summer bill.

“Agricultural water rates are important to the viability of farms in Lincoln,” Agricultural Commission co-chair Ari Kurtz said at the Water Commission’s January 7 meeting. “Farmers use town water to wash vegetables, maintain community gardens, and water crops when wells are not available or treated water is required. Building wells is a significant expense that many small farmers cannot absorb and would discourage small startup agricultural operations… If water conservation or the need for increased revenue for the Water Department were significant drivers of the decision to rescind agricultural water rates, we would like to have the chance to examine alternatives that are less damaging to the farming community.”

Kurtz was reading from a letter that he and Agricultural Committee co-chair Louise Bergeron wrote to the commission.

“These will be crippling rates for many people,” said Steven Kanner, who owns Kanner Family Orchard on Bypass Road, which supplies fresh fruit to customers including the Lincoln schools and Codman Community Farms (CCF).

“For us, the situation is critical,” said Pete Lowy, manager of CCF. “We would have to double or triple rates for garden plots.” CCF leases more than 100 community gardening plots to residents.

The Water Commission approved an interim agricultural rate structure in 2017, though it’s unclear who now qualifies for that rate. After extending an exemption for Brian Turnbaugh of 153 Lexington Rd., the commission approved an interim fee structure whereby Tier 2 would encompass 20,001–100,000 gallons per quarter. This was proposed as an “interim measure” by commission member Packy Lawler, who advocated a rate structure for agricultural use that encourages water conservation, according to meeting minutes.

“We’ve had agricultural water rates on our agenda or list of things to do for about five years,” commission member Ruth Ann Hendrickson said at this week’s meeting.

Wiser’s June agricultural proposal wasn’t useful for Lincoln, Hendrickson said. “It was sort of a generic proposal that MaryBeth had picked up from various sources on the Internet. It was really more appropriate to a place like the Midwest,” with its massive amounts of livestock and farming acres. “It was more complicated than we needed.”

As the commission was discussing the issue this week, it was apparent that they did not have current data on the number of farms in town, how a farm is defined, how much water they use, and which have separate water meters for agricultural uses such as watering animals and irrigating crops as opposed to regular indoor use. This stems in part from difficulties some officials have had in using Munis, the town’s financial data system.

“What we really need is some data,” Hendrickson said. “How much water are we talking about? It’s a balancing act between supporting the town in its desire to have farms vs. asking to what extent do our customers want to subsidize the farmers. That’s the question we’re going to have to wrestle with… Every year we already overdraw our [state DEP] permit. We’re between a rock and a hard place.”

The commission decided to appoint a subcommittee to study the issue of agricultural water rates, chaired by member Michelle Barnes and including Agricultural Commission members. But they’re under a tight deadline, with the public hearing on new rates set for February 4.

Amid grumbling, voters approve another loan for Water Department

November 3, 2019

By Alice Waugh

The Water Department will be getting more oversight after its recent spending spree to fix a rash of problems with the water system.

In response to the funding crisis, a team of town officials — Town Administrator Tin Higgins, Assistant Town Administrator Mary Day, Finance Director Colleen Wilkins, and Finance Commission members Jim Hutchinson and Tom Sander — are now attending the meetings of the three-person Water Commission to oversee their budgeting and decision-making process.

The department needs to bond a total of almost $2 million after Superintendent MaryBeth Wiser discovered numerous problems shortly after she was hired in March 2018, Water Commission member Ruth Ann Hendrickson explained at a Special Town Meeting on November 1. With one “nay” vote, attendees approved borrowing $967,000 — just months after approving $1.01 million in borrowing at the Annual Town Meeting last March.

The Water Department is not funded by property taxes but rather by water rates assessed to Lincoln household who use town water. The latest expenditures will result in a rate hike of around 50%, on top of last spring’s 25% rate hike.

At the meeting’s outset, Town Moderator Sarah Cannon Holden warned the audience that “we’re talking about finances and not personnel and other kinds of issues,” a reference to controversy swirling around the Water Department’s management and staffing turmoil explored in an October 31 Lincoln Squirrel article.

Wiser was hired in March 2018 “and almost immediately realized many of the systems at the water treatment plant and well were showing signs of age and deterioration — they hadn’t been [properly] cleaned, maintained, and calibrated,” Hendrickson said. The new superintendent asked the Water Commission to hire a new engineering consulting firm, Tata & Howard, and we started getting a lot of suggestions,” Hendrickson added.

Concord and Wayland use the same firm and are “pleased” with its work, and its reports to Lincoln “are much higher quality than what we had been getting from our previous consultants,” Hendrickson said.

Meanwhile, the town’s water has for some time been showing borderline high levels of a chemical produced by chlorine reacting with naturally occurring organic matter. The organic matter content in Flint’s Pond is twice what it was when the plant was designed in 2002, Hendrickson said, necessitating $330,000 for equipment to perform coagulation pretreatment.

Other issues that led to the funding requests were uncovered by the state Department of Environmental Protection in its triennial inspection in August 2018. That inspection report listed 27 deficiencies and 12 recommendations, whereas the 2015 report contained only three deficiencies and four recommendations. Current and former Water Department employees told the Lincoln Squirrel that Wiser actually encouraged the DEP inspector to find problems.

Also in the latest spending package is money to pay an outside consultant to work in the treatment plant one day a week at about $1,000 a day. The department has been short-staffed for months, reflecting a statewide shortage of licensed water operators but also, former employees say, a toxic work environment.

After the latest improvements and repairs, “we will have a plant that’s been fully refurbished while we’re examining what we’re going to do for the long term… and we won’t have any more of these surprises,” Hendrickson said. Whatever path the town decides to take — making continual upgrades, building a new plant, or investigating having water supplied by the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority — “will take a number of years to bring to fruition,” she said.

Residents at the town meeting were not happy with how things have been run. “We didn’t get an honest answer at the last Town Meeting. Can we have a real long-term plan for the department — an honest estimate audited by somebody outside the town?” one resident said. “I don’t like this crisis-style management.”

Higgins acknowledged that because the Water Department operates as an enterprise fund separate from the rest of the town’s finances, its budgeting process has not been overseen by the Capital Planning Committee (CapCom) or the Finance Committee in the past. The newest iteration of the Water Commission — which now includes Selectman Jennifer Glass and member Michelle Barnes, who were sworn in several weeks ago after the resignations of Bob Antia and Heather Ring — “is more receptive to participating in some of those processes,” Higgins said.

“I speak with a bit of frustration,” said Peter Braun, a former selectman and CapCom member. More cooperation with other town boards “doesn’t mean allowing someone coming to your meetings — it means dialogue, and it just wasn’t happening… there was stonewalling, basically… it’s time to change the dynamic and the paradigm here.”

Water Department in financial and staffing crisis

October 31, 2019

By Alice Waugh

At a Special Town Meeting on November 2, voters will be asked to approve a second large request for Water Department funding this year — and residents who use town water could see a rate hike approaching 50%.

This week’s move to borrow $967,000 and transfer another $340,000 from retained earnings comes eight months after $1.01 million in Water Department borrowing was approved at the Annual Town Meeting (ATM) last March. The resulting 25% rise in water rates came after several years with no increases, and the next rate hike (which won’t be known until after a public hearing has been scheduled) will be “significant,” Town Administrator Tim Higgins said.

The latest urgent need for borrowing is a result of several factors: not enough spending on preventive maintenance and upgrades in recent years, a series of chemical accidents and other events in recent months, and staff turnover combined with a tight labor market that have left the Water Department chronically short-handed and required expensive part-timers to fill the gaps.

While many officials are resigned to the new expenses, others in town — including several former Water Commission members and Water Department employees — say that some of the looming expenditures aren’t truly necessary right away, and that the sudden need for cash is due to mismanagement by department Superintendent MaryBeth Wiser.

The saga began with a routine inspection by the state Department of Environmental Protection in August 2018 that uncovered several problems. The report from the triennial inspection, which happened to occur a few months after Wiser was hired, took the Water Commission by surprise because it listed many more issues (27 deficiencies and 12 recommendations) than the previous inspection in 2015.

The two biggest items approved for bonding last March were required as a result of that 2018 inspection: $355,000 for safe chemical handling storage and ventilation upgrades, and $400,000 for chemical handling and ventilation compliance work at both the water treatment plant on Sandy Pond Road and the town well on Tower Road (see page 47 of the 2019 ATM warrant).

The November 2 bonding requests totaling $967,000 are:

An additional $148,000 for the previously approved chemical handling and ventilation system, largely because the project scope has expended to include a chlorination system at the well
A complete replacement of all 240 filtration modules in the treatment plant ($364,000)
A new coagulation system at the treatment plant to combat a higher-then permitted level of disinfection byproducts in the treated water
Another $125,000 on top of previous estimates for building a platform and catwalk to safely service the filter modules

Chemicals

As ordered by the DEP, engineers were already designing systems to provide more safety around the caustic chemicals used to treat the town’s water, but two unrelated chemical spills in the past year highlighted the deficiencies. In November 2018, rainwater seeped into a pipe connected to a barrel of hydrochloric acid used to wash the filters. The resulting chemical reaction produced an “off-gassing” of fumes that triggered a regional hazardous-materials response by firefighters and sent treatment plant operator Jeremy Bernard to the emergency room.

See photos by Jeremy Bernard of conditions at the water treatment plant
(click thumbnails for larger versions and captions)

That accident would not have happened if the barrels of chemicals were fitted with proper piping and airtight lids, Bernard said. In the past, much smaller off-gassing episodes that were undetectable by smell have resulted in repeated respiratory symptoms of water treatment plant staff, he added.

In addition to the added request for a new well chlorination system, two tanks and some piping were also tacked on to the previously planned work. “MaryBeth came to us and asked us if we could include those three things” as well fixing a defect that allowed a leak of spilled sodium hydroxide to spread under a containment wall, said Ryan Neyland of Tata and Howard, the Water Department’s engineering firm, at an October 29 Water Commission meeting.

The company has provided a host of consultation and design services as well as a staff member to work at the plant one day a week at a cost of about $1,000 a day. The department has needed that outside help because two treatment plant positions have been vacant since at least last spring, largely due to a statewide shortage of licensed water treatment operators. One person was offered a job but turned it down, and the town has raised the starting salaries in an attempt to attract more interest, Water Commissioner Ruth Ann Hendrickson said.

Meanwhile, the two remaining treatment plant staff members have been working on a schedule of 12 days on and two days off since February, “and we are beyond exhausted,” Bernard said. Their work includes responding to after-hours problems caused by power failures, partial system shutdowns and other issues.

Saturday’s funding request also includes $100,000 to handle a spill of potassium hydroxide at the well. About 300 gallons of the highly alkaline fluid leaked due to an equipment failure and then seeped out of the building into the ground through a cracked seam. The well was taken offline as a precaution and won’t be allowed back into service until repeated testing satisfies the DEP that the chemical didn’t seep down and contaminate the water, but that should happen “very soon,” Hendrickson said.

Filters

At the heart of the water treatment process are the filters, which must be washed in two different ways according to a schedule. They are supposed to last at least five years but could last “seven or even ten years if they’re kept in good condition and not stressed with poor water quality,” Neyland said, adding that Flint’s Pond has excellent quality. The filters are all showing signs of degradation, and Wiser has said that they are about nine years old and have reached the end of their useful life.

The town needs to appropriate money right away because the process of ordering and getting new filters shipped takes several months, and they should be installed before warm weather increases the amount of organic materials in the water and puts more strain on the filters, Wiser said.

However, others say the filters are actually not very old, and that much cheaper measures could significantly extend their life. In addition to the regular sanitizing washes (which they’re getting more and more frequently), they’re supposed to be cleaned with a hydrochloric acid solution every three months — but that hasn’t happened on schedule since the off-gassing incident. After the vapor leak, a temporary ventilation system made of wood and plastic sheeting was installed around the chemicals, but Bernard said he has refused on safety grounds to open any new barrels of hydrochloric acid until primary containment is established with an airtight lid.

“As soon as we can do an acid cleaning, we’ll see a dramatic improvement” in the performance of the filters, Bernard said. “I believe people who have been listening to MaryBeth will be surprised by how well things may operate once our cleaning system is made functional. To replace [the filters] now is like putting the cart before the horse. You wouldn’t put new tires on a car with two broken axles… I don’t want to see those filters going into the treatment plant until we see what the long-term plan is going to be.”

Bernard and former employees also said that most of the 240 filters are only about three years old. In 2016, the manufacturer gave the town more than 180 discontinued filters for free, and they’ve been installed a few at a time since then. Wiser told the board at its October 3 meeting that the department only received 100 free filters, and that any new filters installed alongside older ones would have to do double duty and would wear our faster as a result.

But Hendrickson disputed this view. “The best practice in this case is to really have them replaced all at the same time,” Hendrickson said. “By the time we can get new filters due to the long lead time, the upgraded chemical handling systems will be in place and all
the associated valves will have been replaced, so we are not ‘putting the cart before the horse’.”

Coagulation

Coagulation pretreatment involves adding a chemical such as alum to the water to make tiny particles clump together so they’re big enough to be caught by the filters (a step that also extends the life of the filters themselves). Residents received a notice on October 8 that Lincoln’s water had exceeded the maximum allowed proportion of trihalomethanes (TTHM) at one of two sampling locations. TTHM forms when chlorine-containing disinfectants that are added to the water to kill germs react with naturally occurring organic matter from decaying plant and animal products.

Officials aren’t sure why some TTHM levels were high in both 2018 and 2019, though warmer pond water due to climate change is probably a factor. Also, when the level rises, it inundates more leaves and animal products on the formerly dry shoreline, meaning the water needs more filtering and disinfection.

Water levels rise when the pond is replenished with rainfall, or when the dam that holds back the water is deliberately heightened, though this is very rarely done. Sometime in the past several months, Wiser told staff to temporarily raise the dam by adding boards to the top, causing the water to rise so much that it crept close to the pump house and also began seeping under the dam, which was upgraded in 2017.

No one is sure why the boards were added. Wiser referred requests for comment to Hendrickson, who said, “I haven’t been able to get a straight story.”

Management

Former Water Commissioners Bob Antia and Heather Ring echoed the sentiment that Wiser is not always forthcoming with clear explanations of why certain steps were taken or expenditures are necessary.

“When MaryBeth doesn’t want to answer a question, it takes a really long time to not answer the question, and by then you’re tired,” said Antia. He resigned partway through his second term on the commission because a change in his work hours made it impossible to attend the group’s daytime meetings.

Ring resigned earlier this month after only seven months in the commission because she was so disenchanted with Wiser. In a statement to the Lincoln Squirrel in Thursday, she wrote:

“Lincoln Water Superintendent MaryBeth Wiser started her job with a fully staffed department and level-funded budget. Preventative maintenance measures were not in place, and maintenance was reactive when equipment broke. It was soon evident water rates needed to increase to perform further reactive maintenance. Superintendent Wiser, while managing to perform reactive maintenance, continually fails to prioritize needs and create a long-term plan for maintaining Lincoln’s aging system. In addition, staff morale continued to degrade like our water system, and a hostile work environment festers. The department needs a leader who can lead them out of crisis mode and into the modern world.”

“She doesn’t have the knowledge she represents herself as having” about how the plant operates, Bernard said. “She uses the vocabulary well, and she comes off as being educated on the subject… but she gets her information from the engineers. They keep taking money and giving her suggestions.”

Bernard has complained repeatedly to Higgins and Assistant Town Administrator Mary Day about allegedly abusive conduct by Wiser and safety issues at the plant, “and their collective reactions have been ‘Do your job,’” he said. He acknowledged he has been cited several times by Wiser for insubordination and was accused by former Superintendent Greg Woods of harassment “because I wouldn’t drop the subject when he told me to” after Bernard raised concerns about operational or safety issues.

“They tell me I’m overreacting… but I have fought and fought to get the right things to happen up there,” he said.

But Bernard has not been the only employee to clash with Wiser. Since she was hired 19 months ago, a water treatment staff member and three administrative assistants have resigned. “I have not investigated this personally, but my experience in the private sector is that when you have a bunch of people leave like that, there’s probably an underlying cause,” Antia said.

Several of these former employees, who spoke to the Lincoln Squirrel on condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation, agreed with Bernard’s views on Wiser.

“I really don’t think she knows how to run the treatment plant,” said one.

“The environment was extremely toxic and she was verbally abusive. I had no choice but to leave to save my health and my sanity,” said another.

In a statement emailed to the Lincoln Squirrel on Thursday, Bernard expanded on his comments:

“I make these statements in fear and expectation of retaliation. Due to the town administration’s repeated acknowledgment of how impressive it is that MaryBeth Wiser has received so much money from the Water Commission, I assume I will be fired for making these statements, but the people who pay for and drink the water should know…

“I have moral objections to the way money is being wasted in our department due to the lack of knowledge and understanding of our superintendent. I have always advocated for the needs of the department and the quality of the water in this town. And due to the over $0.5 million invested in me by the town of Lincoln over the past eight years, and the home I own and maintain with that funding, I feel obligated to try and address the real issues within our department. I have always stood up and addressed public and personnel safety issues and have been met with swift and irrational retaliation for it. I have no reason to expect differently now, but I have hope that the real problem will be addressed before MaryBeth Wiser is allowed to destroy another life and career of personnel under her control,” Bernard wrote.

As superintendent, former employees say Wiser has taken a markedly different approach from that of her predecessor. “Greg was a working superintendent; he got his hands in there and did whatever needed to be done,” said one. In contrast, Wiser has her staff do most of the operational work and relies much more heavily on outside engineering consultants, sources said.

When asked to describe Wiser’s management style, Hendrickson was diplomatic. “It’s not clear… who knows… it’s very hard to put your finger on that. I’m not there on a day-to-day basis,” she said.

Spending requests

The Water Commission has been taken aback by the recent spending requests. “It was a difficult situation. [Woods] never asked for more money by saying ‘I need this and that, or we need more maintenance.’ We wondered, how did this happen?” Hendrickson said. “Here we had Greg, who we all thought was wonderful, and then MaryBeth says “this is broken, this is broken and this is broken.’ It took a while for us to really believe that what she was saying was true.”

Reached by phone on Thursday, Woods declined comment on his or Wiser’s work as superintendent.

During the DEP inspection in 2018, several sources said, Wiser actually encouraged the inspector to find deficiencies. “I think she thought the sure-fire way to get money out of the Water Commission was having the DEP cite us and say we have to do something,” a former employee said. Water Department staff “were not trying to hide anything, but she was practically pointing stuff out. She’s addicted to spending money when it’s not hers, and she loves brand-new things.”

After the Lincoln Squirrel published a story on October 25 about the upcoming bonding request, an anonymous reader (later confirmed to be a former employee) commented underneath, “As long as the vampiric rapaciousness that has run rampant under her tenure is allowed to continue, more and more money will be requested, and Lincoln residents will be asked to pay up.”

The dollar amounts for some requests have also changed. Wiser told the commission in October 2018 that the total cost for the 240 filter modules would be about $192,000. At a meeting last week, she said the cost would be $325,000, while the motion at Saturday’s Town Meeting asks for $364,000.

According to the 2019 ATM warrant, the Water Department’s annual operating budget was $1.11 million in fiscal 2018 and $1.19 million in fiscal 2019. Figures from earlier this month show a budget of $1.37 million in fiscal 2020, while the initial request for fiscal 2021 (not yet voted on by the Water Commission) is $1.75 million, a 28% increase from the current year.

The future

Unfortunately, this year’s combined $2 million in bonding for the Water Department won’t mark the end of its financial needs. The Tower Road well is more than 40 years old, with reduced capacity and more frequent cleanings needed, and is slated to be replaced in the next couple of years. In fact, Wiser’s original request for capital spending in fiscal 2021 included $500,000 for a new well.

The water tank on Bedford Road is also showing signs of age, with a possible leak and a deteriorating concrete lid. The water treatment plant was “designed like a glove to fit around the equipment that’s there and was not designed with enhancements in mind,” Hendrickson said, and the pumping station next to Flint’s Pond is maxed out in terms of space as well. And then there are the miles of aging water mains all over town.

One bit of good news, however: in three years, the 20-year bond for construction of the treatment plant will be paid off, which will free up about $187,000 a year.

The Water Commissioners are frustrated at the slow pace of the the design, approval, and bidding process for getting work done, and they’re chagrined at having to repeatedly seek money for upgrades, Hendrickson said, but the alternatives — years of delay and millions of dollars for either an entirely new treatment plant or a possible alliance with the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority — aren’t necessarily more palatable. “But we’re all unanimous that the money we’re asking for is really needed or we wouldn’t be asking for it.”

More borrowing, water rate hikes on the horizon

October 25, 2019

At the upcoming Special Town Meeting, the Water Department will ask voters for the second bond issue this year to pay for repairs and deferred maintenance in Lincoln’s water system — a bond that will result in another rate hike for those on town water.

The bond vote will take place at a Special Town Meeting on Saturday, Nov. 2 at 9 a.m., right before the State of the Town meeting. The Water Commission is still in the process of determining exactly how much money will be sought, but the figures should be available at the conclusion of the group’s special meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 29 at 10 a.m.

The requested allocation comes only seven months after residents approved a $1 million bond for the Water Department at the 2019 Annual Town Meeting (see page 46 of the 2019 town meeting warrant for details). Some of the new borrowing will go to finish paying for some of the unfinished projects from that list that turned out to be costlier than expected.

At a meeting earlier this week, commissioners discussed some of the items from the latest list compiled earlier by Water Department Superintendent MaryBeth Wiser. They were joined by Town Administrator Tim Higgins and Finance Board member Jim Hutchinson, who have been trying to get a handle on the department’s budgeting process and needs. Higgins was scheduled to meet late this week with representatives of Tata and Howard, the department’s engineering consulting firm, to learn more about costs.

Two of the three Water Commissioners were sworn in only last week as interim members: Jennifer Glass and Michelle Barnes. Glass is already a member of the Board of Selectmen, “but we were sort of in emergency mode and she graciously agreed to wear another hat,” Higgins said. The vacancies resulted from the resignations in recent weeks of commission members Bob Antia and Heather Ring.

An insert to the Board of Selectmen newsletter being mailed to residents offers some background. Since the town’s water treatment plant in Sandy Pond Road was complete in 2002, “water treatment technology has changed, software technology has changed, our water profile has changed, and as of 2019, municipalities are subject to federal regulations,” the insert says. Since Wiser’s hiring in March 2018, “she has examined each aspect of the plant’s operations. It has become apparent that the modest level of capital spending has now resulted in a consequential amount of deferred maintenance.”

Among the urgently needed new items that can’t wait until the Annual Town Meeting in March 2020 are replacements for filters that are well beyond their life expectancy. Funds are needed right away because the parts take several months to be assembled and shipped from the manufacturer in Australia, and they need to be installed in the spring before the summer when water demand is high. Wiser told the commission in October 2018 that the total cost for the 240 filter modules was about $192,000. This week she said the cost would be about $325,000.

Also on the list of new expenditures:

Installation of a catwalk required to safely replace the filter banks
Remediation of a chemical release at the Tower Road well
Costs related to maintaining the filter banks until the replacement filters are installed
A part-time contractor to assist with plant operation. Two positions (plant operator and plant manager) have been vacant for several months

The items will be funded by a combination of retained earnings and additional borrowing. The Water Department currently has about $1 million in retained earnings and has a policy of keeping at least $500,000 in the fund at all times, Higgins said.

Though the figures will not be final until next week, he said on Thursday that the latest borrowing amount would be “similar in size” to the earlier $1.01 million. The March 2019 allocation has actually not yet been bonded (expenses have been paid through short-term borrowing), so the upcoming bond will include both sets of expenses, Higgins said.

“The Water Commission has to decide on long-term objectives, but in order to address these issues, there’s going to need to be a pretty significant rate increase to support it,” he said. Back in January, the commission approved a 25% rate hike as well as a $5 increase in the quarterly base charge per water meter.

At this week’s meeting, Wiser said her fiscal year 2021 budget proposal would probably include either further upgrades to the treatment plant to meet expensive new DEP regulations for handling organic matter in the water, or possible even a new plant. “Sometimes retrofitting larger plants with these types of fittings is more expensive than starting from scratch,” she said.

“It strikes me as highly unlikely that it would be cheaper for us to build a separate new plant. We may decide that the MWRA is the right choice,” Hutchinson said. The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority supplies drinking water from the Quabbin Reservoir to several nearby towns including Weston and Lexington.

Aside from the treatment plant issues, aging water mains are another expensive problem in Lincoln and for water systems all over the country. The town had water main breaks on Bedford Road near the library in 2018 and under Route 2A in February 2019. Given the costs involved, some local and state officials are hoping that federal grants will materialize to help pay for proactive upgrades.

Water Dept. needs to borrow more than $1 million

March 18, 2019

New state requirements and deferred maintenance mean that the Lincoln Water Department is asking to borrow just over $1 million.

Of the $1.01 million to be requested via bonding at the March 23 Annual Town Meeting, $817,000 is earmarked for regulatory compliance items required by the state Department of Environmental Protection’s 2018 Sanitary Survey of the Lincoln system. Another $128,000 will pay for for overdue maintenance and replacement of failed equipment (curb boxes, gate valves and hydrants), and $60,000 for a standby generator for the Tower Road well.

The department also plans to transfer another $155,000 from its retained earnings fund to pay for other overdue maintenance items including a truck, repairs to the pump station, office furniture, communications upgrades, and paving work after last year’s Bedford Road water main break, bringing the total planned capital investment to $1.165 million. (See page 46 of the Town Meeting Financial Section and Warrant for details.)

The bond will be repaid entirely from user fees and the Water Department’s retained revenue. The department operates as an enterprise fund, meaning that revenues are expected to meet or exceed expenditures on a year-to-year basis and its budget is separate from the rest of the town’s. In January, the Water Commissioners approved a rate hike (the first since 2015) and a three-tiered system of charges to encourage water conservation.

As required by the Safe Drinking Water Act, DEP surveys are done every three years to inspect surface water system’s facilities, operations, and record keeping. “This year they recorded a lot of violations,” said Water Commissioner Packy Lawler. “I can’t explain why in 2015 none of these things showed up… if [the items] had been demanded at that time, we would have known about it.”

Lawler said he couldn’t comment on whether previous Water Department Director Greg Woods was remiss in being unaware of the problems or failing to address them. Woods was succeeded by current director MaryBeth Wise in March 2018.

The two recent water main breaks (the Bedford Road incident in August 2018 and another along Route 2A between Hanscom Drive and Bedford Road last month) don’t mean that the system as a whole is about to fail, despite the age of its pipes, Lawler said. Officials hope in the future to proactively replace the mains a bit at a time, but a study done several years ago indicated that the cost would be prohibitive at $1 million per mile (Lincoln’s 55 miles of water mains).

Newer technology to reline pipes from the inside without digging up the roads is coming along, Lawler said. “I’m keeping my fingers crossed that that cost will come down to the point where we could begin to proactively repair the mains in place.”