Not enough water in Framingham?
I'll bet most of you have heard about Framingham's decision to go after stimulus money for tapping into some abandoned wells near the Wayland town line. The rub, if Framingham does this, 3.8 million dollars in rate increases would have to be applied to all the other Towns who are served by the MWRA, lower lake levels and threaten the Sudbury river.
Having our own water source certainly makes sense to me and I was a proponent of this years ago, after all, if the wells can be cleaned up, why not use the water right here. What I didn't consider was the amount of money other's would have to pay and the environmental impact such work would have on our community.
Let's see what the Feds and State watch dogs have to say about this.
posted by Jim Pillsbury @ 9:52 AM
7 Comments
7 Comments:
I don’t follow what you are saying here. It will cost other cities and towns more if we get our water from wells in Framingham? Why? Wouldn’t they have more water in the reservoirs if we don’t take any out? And even if it does cost them more if it costs us less we should do it. We can not worry about the expenses for other towns they would not worry about it if the tables were turned. How would wells in Framingham threaten the Sudbury River?
On another topic Jim I have heard rumors that Framingham had messed up and not used money approved in the Federal Budget in 1999 for some sort of road or bridge repair and now we only have a limited time to actually use this before the money is no longer available to us. Four questions, how the hell did we miss this for the last 10 years; two, the person who should have followed up on this is no longer an employee of the town of Framingham I hope; three, why didn’t our elected officiails who deal with these things on the state and federal level make sure we were aware of this and of how to get this mone, and fourth, and how do we make sure this does not happen again? Residents of Framingham should be outraged over this. That is a dollar amount that we as residents would have had deducted from the town expenses we had to cover if the people involved had done their jobs and I hear it was a large amount, over $3 million.
Worried,
The new tunnel that was built these past years will be paid for by rate payers, over the long haul. If Framingham drops out of that agreement by having it's own water supply, all the other MWRA communities served will have to pick up that difference.
The idea of regional services and infrastructure is a good one, and when a town or city opts out of such agreements, the region may suffer.
The environmental and water experts state that pulling water from that aquifer will help lower lake and river levels. We have to rely on the experts on this water issue and I think it would hurt this Town if the lakes or river would drop in height.
Angry,
I saw that same meeting on Gov access and was just as shocked as you were. The idea now is to use some of that money for a re construction of a bridge, when I had heard, it was already done and that this money would not apply.
It's a shell game now for the Town leaders to spend that money the way it was first intended to be spent.
I'd love to know who it was that dropped the ball... could have it been the almighty George King?
so Jim what do we do to make sure this money is not lost to the Town at this point? I hesitate to leave that up to the same people who messed this up for the last 10 years. Do we have any other options on how to get this handled? Maybe some town residents form a commitee to oversee this, after all, it is our money!
How will we know what exactly the feds say about this? Is that information something that will be public knowledge? Will you post that information here?
It's all in the Selectmans hands at this point. I was following this last week on cable.
They look like idiots trying to game the system and use that money for the same bridge repair, as I understand it, it has to be reveiwed and approved by higher authorities, which may or may not happen.
I guess the worse that can happen is the Framingham loses that money for any shovel ready project. The best would be that that money is used for another major project in Town. And it's my bet, the selectman will do anything to keep that money here.
I'll keep an eye out for this and let everyone know.
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