Town Administrator Paul Sieloff, on the left, updated the board about the water line project at their meeting on Monday.

LANESBOROUGH, Mass. — The water line expansion up Ore Bed Road is complete.

 

Three homes are lined up to be connected to the system. The town allocated some $350,000 to expand the water system from Balance Rock to about a half-dozen homes on Ore Bed in response to contamination being found in a residential drinking water well.

 

"They have finished the main line. They have even finished pressurizing it and chlorinating it," said Town Administrator Paul Sieloff.

 

"The end is right there in front of us."

 

Sieloff said three of five homes in the area have agreed to be hooked up to the system, which should happen soon. The main line is now complete but the road will need to be fixed up. 

 

The town administrator suggested that there maybe enough money to expand the paved section of the road somewhat farther up Ore Bed. Currently, the pavement ends at the intersection of Miner Road. 

 

The Selectmen squashed that idea on Monday, however, saying townspeople approved the spending for the water line, not pavement. And the road's subsurface would need a significant amount of work to be able to hold the pavement — otherwise it'd just make the road worse.

 

"We asked the residents to pay to solve a water issue not to pave a road," Chairman John Goerlach said.

 

The Selectmen said new drainage and gravel would be needed for Ore Bed to be paved. Goerlach estimated some 300 feet of the road would need to be dug out and replaced with new drainage.

 

The project was a massive undertaking involving both the Water Department and the Department of Public Works doing the work in-house rather than contracting it out. All summer workers from both departments laid the main line about a third of a mile up the road.

 

Now, a chronic concern over contamination has been somewhat alleviated. In 2011, the state Department of Environmental Protection found high levels of trichloroethylene — a chemical used to clean grease off industrial metal parts — in Joseph Trybus' well. The Trybuses believe the contamination came from the nearby landfill but town officials have denied responsibility.

 

The town is required to pay for a number of monitoring tests per year for the landfill. Since finding the chemicals, the state has ramped up the number of tests in hopes to find the cause of the contamination, which includes testing inside of the homes.

 

In 2014, one test showed a new chemical and the state forced the town to pay for an additional series of test. Those tests were negative but the town was forced to dip into reserves to pay for them. Those additional tests led to an annual cost for all of the testing at some $54,000 — $34,000 of which was not anticipated and came from reserves.

 

Then the Board of Selectmen opted to run a water line up Ore Bed. The water line increases the Water Department's customer base, alleviates many of the required DEP testing, and reduces the chances of more contamination seeping its way into the drinking water.

 

Town meeting approved funding for the project twice — once at the 2014 town meeting and then another round of funding in 2015. 

 

In other business, the Board of Selectmen have disbanded the docks bylaw committee. A group of residents have been meeting and proposing new bylaws to help alleviate neighborhood concerns over the use, access, and ownership of docks on Pontoosuc Lake. In 2012, a bylaw passed that was significantly scaled down from its original version.

 

In 2014 and 2015, the committee proposed newer versions but town meeting voted both of them down. Since this last town meeting, the committee members appeared before the Board of Selectmen asking for one last vote, on a much more scaled-back bylaw. The board, however, was not interested.

 

"We've agreed informally that the town didn't want to do a bylaw at the town meeting," Sieloff said. "I think we decided to all take a big rest."

 

The bylaw has been quite controversial and both sides — for and against — had lawyered up to fight for their positions. That also led to filings of open meeting law violations against the committee. 

 

Selectmen had appointed members to the informal committee and the attorney general's office has been trying to determine if it was in fact subject to open meeting laws.

 

Sieloff said the quickest way to solve that question is to just rescind the bylaw committee and its appointments. Residents could on their own or in a group submit a citizens' petition to put another docks bylaw to a vote.