Water in a River Isn't Wasted

The Hartford Courant’s May 3 online Op-Ed titled “Sell Water to UConn? Or Flush It Away?” (http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/hc-op-curtis-mdc-water-to-uconn-make...) by Tim Curtis of the MDC inspires the Farmington River Watershed Association (FRWA) to comment about the best use of the MDC’s water supply for the greater good of Connecticut. We do so cautiously, since the MDC maintains that FRWA is legally bound not to oppose water sales from the Barkhamsted and Nepaug Reservoirs so long as those reservoirs contain surplus salable water. Here, then, is what we support about exporting water from the Farmington Watershed, home basin of MDC’s reservoirs. Connecticut’s economic recovery might indeed be enhanced by the expansion of UConn, among other things. But if the MDC was ever to become the water supplier for UConn’s expansion, we support locating UConn’s tech park closer to the center of MDC’s service area, perhaps a community in greater Hartford that would benefit from economic revitalization and would welcome re-development of existing facilities. Re-use is more environmentally beneficial than building new. Water use has in fact decreased, so that there is more water available from the MDC’s reservoirs right now than the MDC once mistakenly projected. This provides an opportunity for greater Hartford to undergo economic expansion and community revitalization for years to come. There would be no risk of running short of the water supply that was ingeniously, specifically designed to supply the capital region within the Connecticut Valley. We support this long-standing use of the reservoirs’ drinking water. Like the MDC’s Clean Water Project, it would signal a continuing commitment to Hartford itself, the original focus of the MDC. We agree that the amount of water proposed for export to UConn and its surrounding towns is small compared to the flow of the lower Farmington River (though we note, as an academic point, that the lower river’s flow has in fact been short of tens of millions of gallons a day on average ever since the reservoirs were built). It’s not the lower river, it’s the waterways just below Nepaug and Barkhamsted reservoirs that are the most water-starved and could use a sip of the 12 million gallon/day surplus behind the dams. To echo a sentiment in Mr. Curtis’s op-ed: why be wasteful? Take 5 mgd of additional drinking water-- if it really can be justified by far-sighted and responsible planning, and not just immediate economic stress. But since no one’s buying the rest (or any) of the surplus right now, we support releasing some of it into the tributaries below the reservoirs. Where tens of millions of gallons per day are withheld from a river, even a trickle is welcome. Unsold water released to a river isn’t wasted. It provides dilution for pollutants, recreation for people, and habitat for fish and wildlife. In river management lingo, “flushing” is considered a necessity for river health. The question “Sell water, or flush it away?” is a real question, not a rhetorical one. It deserves serious consideration. For this reason and many others, we support a renewed-- and this time effective-- effort by the State of Connecticut to develop a statewide water supply plan.