STORM CHANGES HEARING DATE

Last Friday, Cherenzia delivered a pile of new information to the Planning Department. (New documents include a totally revised Traffic Study and a hydrogeology report.) Then Irene arrived along will wind, rain and power outages. Town Hall remained closed until Thursday. Since Town staff, as well as our experts, need time to review the new information, P & Z commissioners have postponed the public hearing until:

                      Monday, September 12. 

                  Mystic Middle School     7PM.  

Thoughts on wells and public water supplies

           As Town residents, we have a collective responsibility to speak out against incomplete applications, inaccurate reports and unanswered questions. This website has insisted on the need for full disclosure on important issues that may effect the entire town... issues such as water resources and their protection.

       Private wells, in a sense, are public assets.  If private wells fail because surface or ground water is disrupted, water supply to those families with failed wells becomes a public issue, a liabiltiy, an expense the entire community must share.  

       We already have an example on Mary Hall Road of private wells becoming public liabilities.  In l977, three wells went dry due to excavation at the waste water treatment plant.  The treatment plant and the three failed wells are situated just across Mary Hall Road from the proposed Cherenzia project.

      In the fall of 1977, the Town, at taxpayers’ expense, set up temporary water supplies to homes with failed wells.  Town taxpayers, with some help from State agencies, eventually paid to extend the Westerly public water line and to reestablish the supply of potable water to those homes with failed wells.  

       Do we want to repeat this experience on a grander scale?  Has the Town factored in costs of reestablishing water supplies disrupted by the Cherenzia project? What if thirty wells in the area -- at homes immediately adjacent to the project -- need public water because their wells fail?  This disaster will quickly cancel any benefit to the Town from increased property tax revenue.