Oak Bluffs officials are making a push to prevent a summertime water shortage.
With a growing summertime population using more and more water, officials with the town’s water district are considering building a new well — estimated at $10 million — to help meet the demand.
Michael Silvia, Oak Bluffs Water District superintendent, told the town’s select board on July 23 that the district’s infrastructure wasn’t able to meet the growing water demands in July and August. This has led to mandatory water bans and encouraging residents to water their lawns every other day, rather than every day.
If the pattern continues unabated without a new water source, Silvia said that new residential developments in town may not have access to water.
“We’re going to be tapped out,” Silvia said, although when that would be is unknown.
The amount of water used has surged over the years, especially in the summer. According to Silvia, Oak Bluffs used around 412 million gallons of water last year. That’s around 32-million gallons more compared to 10 years ago, when Silvia said around 380 million gallons of water was used. Silvia said it is likely the town will probably use over 400 million gallons of water by the end of the year.
Silvia also said the time when the most amount of water was used on a daily basis was between 3 am and 8 am. That also means there is less water available for first responders if a fire were to spark in Oak Bluffs during the early morning hours.
In such a situation, Silvia told the Times a “reverse 911 call” would be made asking residents to temporarily stop using water. Silvia said while the town has not had to deal with this before, it would be dire if an emergency occurred when the water tank has not had enough time to refill itself.
He also said Oak Bluffs’ water system isn’t designed to cut off water in a part of town to help an emergency like a fire. Additionally, Silvia said even if this was possible, the option would cause other issues for the town, like making some fire hydrants temporarily unusable.
Silvia said projects are in the works to expand water capacity. These include installing a new well, which the superintendent said would allow the district to pump an additional 1,000 gallons of water per minute. He said construction could be completed in roughly six years — that may cost over $10 million. A new well would mean a new, more modern water tank as well that could cost as much as $10 million. Silvia also said work was underway to redesign two of the Oak Bluffs’ wells in Manuel F. Correllus State Forest to allow them to pump water at the same time. He said that would essentially provide the town with another water source.
“This is something we should be thinking of now as a town,” board chair Gail Barmakian said about the water shortage at last week’s select board meeting.
Silvia told the Times that it isn’t just Oak Bluffs; other Island towns are also dealing with similar water supply struggles.
Representatives of the water district also briefly touched upon PFAS, saying that while there has never been a violation relating to the chemical compounds before, they are being vigilant following the stricter standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. They are investigating mitigation efforts with engineers. A treatment system for PFAS could also cost the town tens-of-millions-of-dollars.
In other news, Oak Bluffs is considering a new taxi regulation to protect taxi companies registered with the town. The regulations include prohibiting certain parking lots or soliciting customers in Oak Bluffs for taxi drivers from companies licensed in other Island towns. No decision was made during the meeting, although the board is considering whether to create a working group to iron out the details.
Meanwhile, the board unanimously approved holding a special town meeting on October 29 at Oak Bluffs School at 7 pm. While no specific issues were determined for the special town meeting warrant, Oak Bluffs town administrator Deborah Potter said it will be for bylaw updates and other matters that may need to be addressed.
Test
What are folks doing at 3 AM? or 4 AM? that the amount of water usage rises so dramatically in the early morning hours? Is that when the automatic watering systems kick on? If that’s the cause, let’s band together as a community and stop this waste of water. With the amount of rain we’ve had, there shouldn’t be the need to make our lawns so green. There shouldn’t be anyway. Is the water use that high in the early mornings when it’s raining?
Sara, I think you’re spot on. Unfortunately there are homes with automatic sprinklers in my neighborhood. When I get up at 6am there are streams of water in the streets in front of these homes. And yes the systems run on rainy days. It’s disgusting.
Thanks for questioning why so much water is being wasted!
Linda, China views seawater desalination
as a strategic imperative.
They will be able to easily pay for it
with savings from not burning fossil fuels.
Desalination plants cost between
$300 million to $1 billion. If we save
$2 trillion per year from not using
fossil fuels in the US, how many desalination plants can we buy in one year?
(If one trillion is equal to one thousand billion, then we could build 2,000 to 6,000 desalination plants (that’s A LOT of fresh water!) with one year of savings from NOT burning fossil fuels). What would we buy in year two?
Just curious, if China has all the fresh water they want, all the free electricity they want, and the biggest military on the planet, where does that leave us?
https://medium.com/@desalter/what-are-the-key-desalination-plants-in-china-and-how-do-they-address-water-scarcity-in-the-country-e6d9fa3c7a34#:~:text=The%20main%20desalination%20plants%20in,them%20easy%20access%20to%20seawater.
Sara,
I think I see where you are going with this and I couldn’t agree more…
People should not be allowed to water their lawns.
Actually, we should ban lawns all together.
Furthermore we should have midnight patrols that fine the living crap out of people who dare to water their lawns and tax surcharges on people who have lawns. We could use google maps and AI to find these people and then fine them right upto the actual cash value of their homes and have the town foreclose on them and then turn the homes over to the unhoused masses. This will solve the water crisis and the unhoused crisis without your water bill going up. It will be perfect and hopefully it drives the 2nd homeowners away and allows us to take more asylum refugees onto the island. Don’t you basically agree?
I had the same thought upon reading the article and your response. The amount of water wasted watering lawns — even when it is raining the the sprinklers automatically kick on — is sobering as we confront climate change. As I have noted before, the ‘suburbanization’ of the island, prompting increased lawn space (instead of natural growth to aid pollinators, as an example), is a serious issue that needs to be assessed and addressed.
That is when golf courses water.
There’s no need to fertilize or water your yard on the vineyard. It’s unnecessary. Give it a try and notice how green your lawn stays without the chemicals and extra water. Repeat: don’t water your lawn or put chemicals on it. It’s not necessary. Thank you.
Water turns brown grass green.
Makes me question, yet again, why the OB Planning Board is looking to rezone and expand business along the Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Rd.
It’s time to evaluate what’s in place and how to preserve it while considering things like water quality.
Commerical reduces residential tax burden.
Commerical does not have kids, the big tax burden.
Susan, let’s use some of the savings from using electricity from our own solar panels (and not fossil fuels) (and also disconnect from the grid) and instead use that money to build a desalination plant.
Put irrigation systems on a separate meter and double the price of that usage. It will pay the 10 million bill for those that chooses to pay. And the rest will stop water their lawns and filling the pool so often.
Water rates should be based on type of use?
How should farms be billed?
$10 million for a well when modest homes go for a million…Sounds like a no brainer. Build (or drill it). Pay for it via user fees, get infrastructure grants and get it done. Nothing more important than a safe, adequate water supply for a community.
Watering lawns every other day is a restriction? The entitlement. We’ve had a wet Summer. My grass hasn’t needed a single watering besides the rain.
Define need.
Definition of need. Require (something) because it is essential or very important. Hope that helps.
That did not help.
Who gets to decide what is essential or very important.
The issue here is that we humans will waste as much of whatever we can.
If there are no consequences for wasteful practices, then people will
just tiptoe through the tulips and not care at all about the consequences
to the tulips they are crushing.
Tisbury charges progressively more per gallon if you use excessive amounts of water.
But that doesn’t make a difference– I’m sure most people have no idea that
is the case. And even if they did, they wouldn’t care.
The solution is actually pretty easy– reduce the pressure by a few pounds.
I think people will spend their usual 30 minutes in the shower shaving and
doing whatever they do in there regardless if the pressure is 34 pounds or
30 pounds. Same thing with watering the lawn– they overwater already, so their
lawns will be just as green.
The solution is not to just build more capacity that will be unused in the winter
to satisfy the summer populations ridiculous demands. That is the beginning
of the road to hell– the day that will inevitably arrive when our taps run dry or
are running with salt water.
Spending tens of millions of dollars to set us up for disaster is a fool’s errand.
Lawns do NOT need to be watered every day. Twice a week should be sufficient unless there’s a hot spell; three times a week should be fine. Or replace the lawn with the kinds of “lawn grasses” used in parts of the country where there is less rain.
Who gets to decide?
How often to the Islands golf courses get watered?
Every problem the town experiences comes from one word and one source; growth. Control the expansion of businesses and the proliferation of new summer homes and you will gain control over the problems. Growth brings additional revenue but the revenue never keeps up with the demands of the problems. Been watching this same mistake made over and over and over. It’s time to stop the insanity by doing something different.
Toni, I have a better idea! Let’s build a bridge. Expand businesses like crazy. Then tourists can park on the mainland, take a bus 🚌 and visit for the day. Spending a lot of money, of course. Then at the end of the day, the tourists take a bus 🚎 back to the mainland. We keep the money.
What do you think?
Toni, did the Island grow when you arrived?
Stop the invasion of people. Enough is enough
When did you invade?
Frederick, I’m confused—stop the invasion of people. You? Which people? Purple people?
Go back to vineyard lawns. Stop wasting water to get your green manicured suburban-looking yards. Disgraceful, vain and selfishness. If we’re going to have a population explosion, as we are on this island, people need to conserve all resources. Money can’t provide more natural resources. Think of the future generations. Is this what we want here?
Exactly, I’m just waiting for Harris and the other liberals to enlighten us that water is not a renewable resource.
Carl –It is renewable, but it is not unlimited.
How hard is that to understand?
You would have to be as dumb as a fence post to
not grasp that concept.
Oh, so now we are moving the goal posts on the benefits of renewables… when the grid fails and we can’t heat our homes or cook our food or drive to work the hypocritical liberals retort will be, hey guy we never said it was unlimited… lol. Now who’s dumb as a fence post? And this coming from a guy who heats his home with dirty burning wood.
Carl, there’s no need to move the goalposts on renewables. If you want to know how good they are, just be a fly on the wall of an oil barons’ meeting. They are fighting, fighting for their livelihoods! Can you imagine a world where manufacturing electricity costs are FREE? Well, with wind and solar it’s nearly free. Transportation? Free. Lighting? Free. Heating and cooling? Free. Dry cleaning and ironing? The electricity part, free. Restaurants? Cooking and baking and hot water? All free.
J, actually, money CAN provide more resources.
For instance, it takes a lot of electricity to desalinate water. Electricity costs some money. Almost no money if we get it from solar panels or windmills (and you can have a few little windmills in your yard). A lot of money if it is generated by coal. A little less than coal if it’s generated from natural gas.
And since the oceans have risen several inches already in the last 50 years, we have enough water in the ocean to desalinate. So, we can have fresh water 💦 by using desalination methods. It just costs a little money.
We can also build filtration systems, which cost some money. Every home could filter their own grey water and water their lawns to keep them gorgeous and green and beautifully landscaped.
It just takes a little money.
On the Space Station, they filter every drop of water 💧 and reuse it. Even for drinking water. I’m not sure that filtering kidney water and then drinking it is conceivable, but that’s what is done. It’s totally sanitary and safe.
It just takes a little money 💰
Mary–I think we can safely say the majority of
h2o molecules on the planet have passed through
somethings urinary tract.
As an elderly citizen of Oak Bluffs, I simply object to the possibility of adding $10 million to the taxes. I know that the rain this summer has kept my lawn (such as it is, admittedly) green; we hand water the prolific garden and flowers. I agree with Ms/Mr Benefit, and others from an ecological standpoint watering the lawns is simply a waste of water, which apparently we assume will last forever. It won’t. Perhaps a separate meter for the in-ground watering systems, at a higher rate is a good idea. Mr. Alasenda, are you a landscaper by any chance? Not trying to cut down your income, but I do think time is not on our side.
Watering and fertilizing your lawn is more than a waste; it is also turning all the ponds into a toxic mess. It’s time people realized that green lawns are not natural and should be history. If the rain turns your lawn green fine, then enjoy it naturally, but watering is unnatural. Live with the brown patches.
Sara, please consider that when we stop buying gasoline for cars, and we have solar panels on our roof to power our electric cars, we’re going to be able to use that money for other things. $10 million in taxes, is NOTHING to the oil barons. That 2 trillion per year going to gasoline and other fossil fuels will be repurposed. Where would you like it to go?
When all of us transition to electric cars powered by our own solar panels, transportation costs will approach zero. How will we (as a society and individually) spend that extra money?
Work fewer hours? Give a helping hand to others? Treat ourselves to some luxuries? Build a bridge?
Comments are closed.