By Rachel Goff
Last year, municipal buildings in Warren ran out of water on two separate occasions and this year, the town is looking to drill a new well.
At Town Meeting on March 3, residents will vote to authorize Warren Select Board to apply for a loan from the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund to borrow an amount not to exceed $259,000 for constructing a water system that will serve the fire station, municipal building, the Town Hall and Warren United Church.
Right now, "We have a very substandard system that's also somewhat dangerous," Warren Select Board chair Andy Cunningham said at the board's meeting on Tuesday, February 17, explaining that the water in the municipal buildings has not been potable for over 10 years.
The 1,000-gallon tank for the spring-fed cistern, which is located beneath the municipal building parking lot, contains high levels of organic contaminants and has tested positive for coliform. Per state law, signs on all of the faucets in the buildings served by the current system warn the public not to drink from them and the buildings rely on bottled water for consumption.
In addition to being contaminated, the spring-fed cistern also does not produce enough water. Last year, the tank ran dry during the summer and again during the fall. One time, it happened on a weekend when the municipal buildings were not open but Warren United Church was and "It was kind of an emergency," town administrator Cindi Hartshorn-Jones said. If the tank runs out of water when the municipal buildings are open, per state law they are required to close.
As a solution to the current system, Warren has selected a strip of town-owned land across the street from the municipal building on which to drill a new well. Engineers will test the well to see if it has a high enough flow rate and, if so, the town will move forward with constructing a second 1,000-gallon storage tank.
If the well does not have a high enough flow rate, the town would need to increase the size of the tank or look into alternate sources, "but we're kind of limited on sites," Hartshorn-Jones said. Per state law, all wells have to be a certain number of feet away from a cemetery and the town's burial ground is located directly adjacent to the municipal building.
As such, the project "is all kind of up in the air until we do the well exploration," Hartshorn-Jones said. To pay for it, the town is applying for two loans from the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund: one for engineering and one for construction. In total, the town is asking voters to approve a loan amount not to exceed $259,000, with an interest rate between 2 and 3 percent.
Because the new water system will be serving multiple buildings, it falls under "much tighter" state regulation, said select board member Bob Ackland.
"What started out as a small project has become something quite larger," Cunningham said.
