At its regular October 26th meeting, the Great Barrington Selectboard voted unanimously, 5-0, to formally oppose any emergency or long-term rate increase by Housatonic Water Works, and to send that negative recommendation to the Department of Public Utilities.
The vote came in response to a letter from HWW’s Jim Mercer, shared at a Great Barrington Fire District meeting on October 6 and dated the same day, in which he said he planned to file for an emergency rate increase.
Several speakers from Housatonic offered public comment before the Selectboard’s vote to express their frustation with their inability to get reliably clean and plentiful water in the village, with one mother bringing her infant to underscore the point. She and other residents were in the room because, as luck with have it, HWW had been working all day to replace a valve at South and Front Streets, they still did not have water, and the company had not clearly communicated the shut-off to its 850 customers.
On October 24th HWW had used their own Facebook page as a means to inform their customers about the shut-off, but the company has only 157 followers. HWW apparently did not share the notice to the neighbors’ group, which has 1,800 members, or in any other way that would be likely to reach most if not all customers, since many chimed in on the Housatonic Neighbors page to to ask early in the day why they had no water, and later in the day to ask when they should expect the water to come back on.
[The water came gradually back on line sometime in the evening, with one Housatonic Neighbor commenting, “It’s trickling on Hart Street at 7:42,” another writing a little after 7, “Front Street is starting to build pressure.” and “Just came on Main Street” a little after 8 pm.]
During her comments at the Selectboard meeting Housatonic Water ratepayer Cecilia Turner shared that she exclusively nurses her 6-month-old because she won’t use the water for formula, and her 5-year-old thinks that drinking water comes from “a giant metal tub in the kitchen.”
She said that because of the water main shutoff she couldn’t feed her daughter solid food, start laundry, or wash her hands. Turner called on Gov. Healey to declare a state of emergency for “850 Massachusetts households” and closed with: “This is not normal. This is not okay, and it is an emergency.”
Turner pointed out that Facebook is her most reliable source of information on such outages, because company notices, when they come, are printed on a small corner of the bill, the flushing schedules are rarely accurate, and the town’s emergency text sometimes doesn’t go out.
Another commenter was Kate Van Olst, speaking as a Housatonic resident and not in her capacity as a town employee. She showed the front page of a Boston Globe story from March, 2025 which included a photo of her and her son, now 11.
“Nothing has changed,” she said.
She asked what the plan will be if HWW goes bankrupt or collapses, or if the interconnection is cut off for nonpayment, and requested that HWW get “not a penny” of the $50,000 state aid recently announced by Representative Leigh Davis to pay off its debts and legal fees.
On legal costs, she said she feels personally “double dipped,” since her taxes pay the town’s attorneys and her water bill pays HWW’s attorneys in the same fight.
State Rep. Leigh Davis also spoke to express solidarity with the Housatonic residents in the room and assure them that she is working with the governor, DPU, DEP, and the AG’s office to solve the crisis, though she acknowledged that things are moving slowly. The $50,000 she secured in last week’s supplemental budget, she further assured them, would be going to the town to help Housatonic customers and “not helping the Mercers.”
Her first priority, she said, is no rate increase, and a second is a quick, smooth transfer of HWW to the next entity.
A full summary of the October 26 meeting will be published on Wednesday.