The site of an old Army barracks in an area of Devens known as Salerno Circle might help Harvard get out of the business of trying to provide contaminant-free water to its customers in the town’s water district.
Engineering firm Tighe and Bond, tasked with determining if connecting to Devens water would be feasible, told the Water Commission at its April 27 meeting it could be done, but would likely come with a $4 million or higher price tag.
Tom Mahanna, vice president of Tighe and Bond, told the commission the closest water connection point in Devens would be near the intersection of Shiloh Street and Salerno Circle. The town initially thought the water mains in that section of Devens had been destroyed when the area’s barracks were torn down, but Mahanna said Devens officials confirmed that the 12-inch water main that supplied the buildings is intact.
From Salerno Circle, Mahanna said, the best connection to Harvard would be down a very steep hill, across the tracks of the freight railway owned by Pan Am Railways, to the end of Depot Road. From there, the water line would continue down Depot Road, past the Transfer Station, to Ayer Road, where it could connect with the existing water main at the northern end of Harvard’s water district.
That path would require about 9,000 feet of water main, Mahanna said. He added that construction would be the easiest part of the project—funding and legal arrangements, including easements on Devens land and agreements with the railroad, would be more complicated. He did acknowledge that the solid ledge on the Depot Road hill would be challenging. “It’s not going to be cheap getting through that area,” he said.
In addition to installing new water mains, Mahanna said an interconnection point would need to be established where the two town systems meet, probably at the end of Depot Road. The town would need to build a facility at that location to house a master meter (Harvard would have to pay Devens for the water it used), a backflow preventer to separate the two systems, and booster pumps to get the water from Devens up to the water storage tank on Bolton Road.
Although the town would still have to read meters and maintain its water mains and storage tank, it would not have to worry about capacity or contamination. Devens has a permitted capacity of 4.8 million gallons a day, and Mahanna said it is barely using half of that. Harvard’s average daily use is about 15,000 gallons. Devens is also in the process of constructing new PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) treatment plants for all three of its wells.
Mahanna said the Department of Environmental Protection would probably require that the town install equipment capable of rechlorinating the water at the interconnection facility. That equipment would be the same as what is currently being installed at the Pond Road wells to solve the coliform bacteria problem.
Since last summer’s well contamination and the discovery of low levels of PFAS in both town wells, the Water Commission has been weighing two options—constructing a $2 million treatment facility at the town well site or connecting to Devens water. The commission must recommend one of the projects to the Select Board in the next month so that Tighe and Bond can prepare an application (due in mid-August) for a low-interest loan to fund the project from the state’s Clean Water Trust.
Mahanna said the treatment facility would have to be “shoehorned” onto the Pond Road well site, and it would have significantly higher operating and maintenance costs than the Devens connection, along with operator licensing requirements. Water Commission Chair Cindy Russo asked Mahanna to analyze those costs to help the commission choose which project to recommend.
The Select Board may already be leaning toward the Devens option. It voted Tuesday to apply for a $400,000 grant from the state’s Rural and Small Town Grant Program to fund schematics and engineering drawings for the Devens water system connection project. Design costs would not be included in the Clean Water Trusts loan. Tighe and Bond will help provide technical information for the grant application, which is due June 4. Recipients will be announced in the fall, too late to influence the commission’s recommendation.
