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Water Supply Committee

Committees: Water Supply Committee

Water Supply Committee

2009 Annual Report

The Water Supply Committee (WSC) is charged with maintaining a Water Supply Policy for the Town of Hingham, and monitoring adherence to this policy in the Town of Hingham. The WSC is working with Aquarion Water Company (Aquarion), the public water supplier for the Hingham, Hull and north Cohasset Water District, on their strategic plan to ensure that we have sufficient water to satisfy the Town’s current and future household and commercial development needs. The State’s 2005 determination that Hingham is in a stressed watershed basin places special requirements on Aquarion and a need for supportive action from all of their customers to practice water conservation.

The State currently limits Aquarion’s maximum water withdrawal to the same level of consumption as averaged from 1981-1985, some 25-years ago. This limit is called our “registered amount”. Even though the district has grown over the past 25-years, water usage has become more efficient so our consumption has rarely exceeded the original registered amount. Over the past year water consumption has actually fallen below the 5 year average. To obtain more water (called a “permitted amount”) the State requires public water suppliers to show that there is a documented need for an additional supply and that existing water supplies are being used efficiently.

Aquarion has recently upgraded and replaced a number of Aquarion’s older wells restoring their original level of withdrawal efficiency allowed at the time of registration. Part of the upgrade involved swapping the highly efficient and better quality Free St. well #4, which had been designated an emergency back up well, with the poorer quality Free St. well #2. So currently, well #2 serves as an emergency back up in case, for example, a production well pump was to break and require replacing. This project did not increase the average amount of water Aquarion can pump, but increased its ability to meet peak demand.

The issue of water demand during the summer dry season, and in particular related to outdoor water use through the use of irrigation systems, was a topic that the WSC spent a good amount of time researching and discussing during many of our past meetings. The WSC worked to develop a bylaw that would establish efficiency standards for all automatic sprinkler systems within Hingham, aside from state-permitted systems such as for golf courses. The State legislature also considered, but did not implement, a change to the plumbing code setting irrigation system standards. In the end, the WSC decided that the need for such a bylaw was not clear and did not warrant town meeting consideration.

The WSC was originally established by Town meeting to periodically evaluate the option for the Town of Hingham to purchase our public water supply system from Aquarion. We last performed this analysis back in 2003. The Committee will continue to consider that option. But, given the increasing centralization of water policy at the state level since the passage of the Water Management Act, including last year’s decision that any declaration on drought conditions and the ordering of water restrictions would be made by the State, makes the idea of “local control” unrealistic.