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Health & Fitness

Comments on Sharon's Water Rates

Following are comments made at the Selectmen's water rates hearing on August 6, 2013.

To the Sharon Water Commissioners

Sharon’s 2010 Water Master Plan revealed that the town has not been raising enough revenue to keep up with maintenance of its aging water supply infrastructure. Sharon has over 100 miles of water mains, 18 miles of which are more than a century old. Some date back to 1885.

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Sharon’s newest well was built 24 years ago. Well #4, which provides almost half of our water, was built more than half a century ago. The capacity of a well tends to diminish gradually over time as the sand and gravel around the intake becomes clogged.

For many years, the Water Department has been trying unsuccessfully to build a new municipal well. They hired a consultant to evaluate potential well sites, and found very few. Pump tests were conducted at two of those sites, but only one, the Canton Street site, showed promise. An unsuccessful attempt was made to acquire this site from NSTAR. Eric Hooper recently informed the water committee that building a new well in Sharon would be very difficult.

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That leaves Sharon with a choice: conserve water, or import supplementary water from MWRA to support growth and development. Conserving water pays for itself through lower energy and treatment costs. Importing MWRA water would cost millions.

Fortunately, Sharon’s award-winning water conservation program has already reduced the town’s water use by 100 million gallons per year–the equivalent of adding a new well. Conservation has accommodated the addition of 79 apartments at the Wilber School and 156 apartments at Avalon Bay, and freed up enough water to support the Sharon Commons mall and housing complex, while avoiding the multi-million dollar cost of importing MWRA water.

Sharon’s conservation-oriented water rates are the cornerstone of its water conservation program. By sending a strong signal to use water efficiently, the current rate structure encourages residents to take advantage of the rebates for efficient toilets and washing machines, and pay attention to the outreach efforts of Sharon’s water conservation coordinator, Nancy Fyler.

The results speak for themselves. In addition to avoiding the multi-million dollar cost of importing MWRA water, conservation is improving our drinking water quality. Water from Well #6 is discolored by iron and manganese that stains laundry, dishes and plumbing fixtures. Water from Well #2 has more nitrates than the other wells. Our dependence on these two wells has already been reduced by lower peak demand for water in summer. With a little more improvement, we could eliminate their use entirely, and skip the multi-million dollar cost of building and operating a filtration plant to remove the iron and manganese from Well #6.

Despite Sharon’s progress, there is still plenty of room for improvement. In 2012, Sharon’s average water use was 58 gallons per person per day, yet hundreds of Sharon households of all sizes keep their water use under 30 gallons per person per day. If everyone did that, the town’s water use could be cut almost in half.

There is a big difference between essential water use, such as drinking, cooking, washing and flushing, and non-essential water use, such as lawn irrigation, inefficient plumbing fixtures, and unrepaired leaks. Sharon’s current rate structure provides a modest amount of water for essential needs at an affordable rate. Few if any residents pay at the highest rate unless they waste water or use it for non-essential purposes.

This past June, Sharon received about ten inches of rain–almost three times more than normal, and more than enough to eliminate the need for lawn irrigation. Nevertheless, the town pumped about eight million gallons more in June than it does in a typical winter month. Lawn irrigation systems are often seen running in the rain–a sign that the highest block rate is not high enough.

The current conservation-oriented water rate structure, featuring steeply ascending block rates, higher summer rates, and a low fixed fee of $15 per quarter, has proven its effectiveness in improving the town’s water use efficiency. This rate structure can easily be adjusted to generate the additional revenue needed to pay for infrastructure maintenance by adding an equal amount to each rate block.

In fact, last November the WMAC voted 6-1 to add an equal amount to each rate block, and leave the quarterly fixed fee at $15. The WMAC subsequently voted 5-2-1 to increase the difference between summer and winter rates to better reflect the importance of reducing summer use, which is typically about 40 percent higher than winter use on a monthly basis.

By simply adding $2 per thousand gallons (0.2¢ per gallon) to each summer block rate, and leaving the winter rates and the fixed fee as they are, you could affirm both votes, while meeting the revenue needs of the Water Department. Doing so would spread the cost of infrastructure maintenance across all users–a higher percentage increase for low users, but a higher dollar amount for heavy users–and increase the incentive to conserve in summer when it matters most. Keeping the fixed fee low affords everyone an opportunity to manage their own water bills through conservation.

Some people don’t think Sharon’s ascending block rate structure is fair to large families. However, consider that flattening the usage rates and increasing the fixed base fee, as some WMAC members have proposed, would result in higher water bills for a majority of large families. That’s because most large families conserve water and benefit from the lower block rates. More than half of the families of six in Sharon never reach the top block rate, even in summer.

All families, large and small, benefit from conservation water rates in the long run because they help avoid the huge cost of supplementing Sharon’s water supply with imported water, or building and operating expensive treatment facilities. This can be accomplished at no cost by retaining Sharon’s steeply ascending usage rates, higher summer rates, and the low $15 fixed fee.

Sharon’s water supply is totally dependent on rain. Every year for the past decade rainfall has been above average, but there is no guarantee that will continue. The most severe drought occurred in 1965. Sharon received only 28 inches of rain that year–less than half as much as the average for the most recent ten year period. In 1965, Sharon only had about 11,000 residents. With a current population of 18,000, the next severe drought could have more serious consequences. Like Joseph in Egypt, we should persevere with our efforts to improve the town’s water use efficiency so that Sharon will be better prepared for the next drought.

In conclusion, I would like to present you with a petition signed by over 550 Sharon residents, who ask you to preserve Sharon’s current conservation-oriented water rate structure.

Paul Lauenstein

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