Date: 4/27/2023
For well over five years now, East Longmeadow residents — and all residents residing in towns served by the Springfield Water Commission have regularly received notices entitled “Important! Drinking Water Report." The same message is published in local newspapers. Inside, it gets worse. It is termed a “Violation Notice” regarding “contaminants “ in your drinking water. These notices are expensive to send out and alarming to residents, but their wording is required by Mass law. The notice points out that the “violation” is really just a technicality, that it is not an “emergency,” that the water is perfectly fine for most people, but maybe not everyone.
The notice itself points out that the cause is the excessive amounts of disinfectants that are being added, first by Springfield and then by East Longmeadow, when rainfall increases the percentages of normal, organic compounds in the reservoirs. That’s moss, mud, grasses and twigs for the most part, that really wouldn’t hurt anybody. But the towns are forced by regulations to over-chlorinate anyway. Some residents complain about the taste of the water. For years we have been told that nothing can be done about this, except to wait until 2027 for Springfield to finish its water treatment plant updates.
I have sent messages to the Mass DPW director as the notice specifies. In my messages I have pointed out that “someone somewhere must have the authority and the guts to call for a slight reduction in the chlorination that would reduce the formation of these contaminants.” I suggested that “to continue sending these notices out makes a mockery of the state’s DEP Drinking Water Program.” I pleaded “please don’t tell me that “nothing can be done” or that “the current procedures make sense” or that “this is the best we can do.” But that’s all I heard back. Apparently no one can do anything but wring their hands until Springfield completes its water project in 2027! It’s absurd, but this is how out-of-control regulation works at the state level. In a one-party state, regulations pile up, and no one is responsible.
Pat Henry
East Longmeadow
