2022 Letter to Public Water Takers
To the Water Takers of the Townsend Water Department
The Board of Water Commissioners and the Water Department staff need and are asking for your support and cooperation in dealing with recent issues resulting from discontinuing water pumping from the Harbor Trace Well. This stoppage of water withdrawal from Harbor Trace Well is as you know due to the detection of elevated levels of the PFAS compounds and occurred in August of 2021.
We are asking that you be extremely conservative in your outdoor water usage under the current circumstances. The Harbor Trace Well was a large portion of our water supply and was able to handle varying degrees of water consumption by our community. Without, the system struggles to maintain pressure and flow direction. The irrigation of your lawns although allowable are a major cause of the consistent discoloration we are experiencing. The over usage of irrigation is putting unnecessary stress on the system and puts the community at risk.
We understand our community has experienced a series uncommon and difficult water issues over the past couple of years and now must face a new one in the declaration of this year’s drought with our region, the Northeast, seemingly baring a large brunt of it.
So, we are exploring revisiting the current restriction program and possibly make changes to it to better accommodate today’s realities. But in the interim, we are asking for and need your cooperation to self-moderate your outdoor water usage by keeping to the current restriction of No Watering during the day (no watering between 9 AM and 5 PM) and not watering every day. In general, turf grasses only need about ¾ of an inch to 1 inch of water per week to maintain green color and active growth. So please adjust your systems if you must water, to those totals. Exempt water usages are as follow: drip irrigation, hand watering, agriculture for consumption and any usage that is health and safety related which does include athletic fields.
If we all cooperate, we believe a large part of the issues the community has been experiencing will be resolved. There is some help on the way by the introduction of the new Main Street Well hopefully within the next week, but the larger issues won’t be resolved until we get the Harbor Trace Treatment Plant built and operational. Until then, we need to be conservative in our usages for the betterment of our entire community.
Sincerely
Townsend Board of Water Commissioners and Water Department.