GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. - In Great Barrington, some residents are still battling with brown water coming out of their faucets but it has been hard to know who is experiencing what.
What You Need To Know
- Housatonic resident creates website for people to discuss their water problem.
- Housatonic residents have been battling brown water for awhile.
- The Housatonic Water Works company asked the town to buy them.
- The town is discussing if that is an option.
Resident Cecilia Turner has dealt with the water issues and created a site where people can log their discolored water to help people get some transparency on where the issues are being seen.
“Hearing stories of my neighbor has brown water… I don’t and not having any answers as to why and so I really just wanted to add more data to the situation and get an idea of what’s happening,” Turner said.
The desire for more transparency comes after residents were not alerted for months about higher-than-normal amounts of manganese in their water.
Manganese is a common naturally occurring mineral found in water, rocks, soil and food.
High levels can be harmful to people.
The MassDEP cited the company for withholding July test results in October.
“It’s terrifying my daughter already has medical problems and that is stressful enough and just turning on your tap and not knowing is the water healthy or safe or clean or dirty or brown or is it going to cause cancer or other problems that’s it’s so scary,” said Housatonic resident Kate Van Olst.
The Housatonic Water Works company recently sent a letter out to the residents saying the town should buy the company.
The town is still talking about the potential purchase, a purchase Great Barrington’s select board chair says is what most people want.
“The consensus of the town, I think, is that they would be more comfortable with someone other than Housatonic Water Works owning the company and specifically if the town of Great Barrington owned the company the rubbing the sticking point is going to be the purchase price,” said Stephen Bannon, chair of the Great Barrington Selectboard.
Bannon tells us after an evaluation of the water company they determined its worth about $2.3 million but needs $30 million worth of repairs.
“In the next few weeks the town will send out a press release and we will hopefully enter into negotiations it would be my hope I don’t know about the rest of the board is think it is to at least discuss with Housatonic water whether they are interested in selling and if we can come to a reasonable price that we can all agree on,” Bannon said.