State advising towns on water

PORTLAND —As both Portland and East Hampton pursue discussions with various water companies, the state has weighed in, advising both towns the requirements for interconnection.

East Hampton is reaching a crisis stage with the lack of a viable source of potable water for both residential and commercial use. Until and unless they find a company that can supply clean water in volume, town officials say efforts to expand the tax base will be crippled.

The two towns have had preliminary discussions about the possibility of extending a water line that currently supplies Portland with water from the Metropolitan District Commission to East Hampton.

At the same time, the two towns are not limiting themselves to that possible solution.

Both Portland First Selectwoman Susan S. Bransfield and East Hampton Town Manager Michael Maniscalco have, independent of one another, reached out to the Connecticut Water Co. and to the Aquarion Water Co.

Connecticut Water, headquartered in Clinton, serves 90,000 customers in 56 cities and town, according to information on its website. Aquarion, headquartered in Monroe, is a subsidiary of Eversource. Its website says Aquarion serves 198,000 customers in 51 cities and towns.

Bransfield and Maniscalco were part of a group of more than 40 people, including town and state officials and water company representatives who met in Hartford late last month to discuss the issue.

Bransfield has said she sees extending water service to East Hampton as opening the way to expanding

it further into eastern Connecticut as part of a regional approach to providing a reliable water source.

For his part, Maniscalco does not disagree with that idea – at least in theory. But he insists East Hampton’s needs are critical and must be met as quickly as possible. He has pointedly described East Hampton as a First World community forced to rely on a Third World water supply.

East Hampton, which depends largely on wells for its water supply now, is bedeviled by both chemical contamination dating back to its 19th century role as a manufacturing center as well as abnormally high levels of iron in the rocks that underlay the town.

Now the state, in the person of Denise Ruzicka,

director of the Water Planning and Management Division of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, has weighed in on what would be required if the decision to move forward with the MDC expansion is agreed upon.

“The transfer of 50,000 gallons or more during any 24-hour period from one distribution system or service to another…would require a permit,” Ruzicka wrote in a letter addressed to the chief executive of the MDC, Portland’s Public Works Director Robert Shea, and East Hampton’s Public Utilities Administrator Tim Smith.

Both towns would be required to file permit applications as well as the MDC, she continued.

“Given that this would be an interbasin transfer of water with multi-town if not regional implications, it would require an individual permit application with the attending public process.

“Further, the department would require the applicants to file an environmental impact report on the transfer which (A) considers the effect of the transfer on present and future water uses in the proposed donor basin; (B)includes a plan for meeting water supply needs and demands in the donor basin for a minimum of twenty-five years; and (C) analyzes the alternative solutions to the water supply or wastewater problem including comparative cost analysis of the proposed transfer relative to alternatives measures.”