MDC's Lack of Response 'Regrettable and Inexplicable'

The Metropolitan District Commission is back in the spotlight as the Simsbury Conservation Commission criticized the company for not responding to a public request on behalf of the Farmington River Basin communities.

The MDC is one of three companies with a proposal under consideration to supplement the existing water supply for the University of Connecticut and the town of Mansfield. Read more about the MDC proposal here.

Of the two proposed MDC pipeline scenarios, the company's preferred scenario would be a 20-mile pipeline that would cost approximately $38.33 million and would add the potential for a new customer base in the towns of Tolland, Vernon, Mansfield, South Windsor, and Coventry. A second proposed pipleline could cost as much as $51 million, according to the proposal.

The proposal estimates that the pipeline could divert as much as 1.93 million gallons from the Farmington River basin every day.

On March 5 the commission sent a letter to the MDC urging the company "to use the excess water in the East Branch to enhance and normalize instream flows in the mainstem."

MDC officials did not respond to Simsbury Patch inquiries regarding the letter.

On April 2, the Conservation Commission sent the following letter to the MDC:

April 2, 2013
With the approval of a majority of the members of the Simsbury Conservation Commission, and with no dissenting votes, Margery Winters, its Vice Chairman, has issued the following statement:  

Townspeople have been asking what response the Simsbury Conservation Commission received to its March 5 letter to the chief executive officer of the Metropolitan District Commission. 

The answer:  There has been no response.  

The Commission wrote to the chief executive officer of the Metropolitan District Commission on March 5, 2013 urging the district to take all reasonable and prudent steps to institute a plan to release "excess" water from its Farmington River East Branch reservoirs.  

The letter pointed out that the legislature had encouraged such a plan in granting the district permission to dam the river and that such releases would help to alleviate problems in the river caused by low flows.  The letter was polite and reasoned and, in the Commission's view, deserving of a response.  

Having had neither an acknowledgement nor a response after two weeks, the Commission sent another copy of the letter, by registered mail.  Another two weeks later, the Commission has still not heard from the MDC.  The Commission has observed that the MDC was structured in such a way that its board does not afford any representation to the twelve or more Farmington Valley towns whose river enriches the MDC but which, themselves, are not provided water by the district.   

The Commission does not believe that such lack of representation, however regrettable and inexplicable, absolves the MDC from an obligation to respond to concerns properly expressed by citizens of the Farmington Valley towns.