Water Risk of Rezoning VOTE NO! on MBTA/SAV/PowderMill Zoning
When the water capacity runs out, important town goals will be less likely to be achieved. In other words, if the water is used up by a race to build market-rate [unaffordable housing]. Just some of the important town goals that there could not be water for:
- affordable housing- restaurants- farming
The Acton Water District has not told us how the zoning changes would impact the quantity/quality/cost of our water because the Town has refused to say how many condos could be created with the propose zoning. The Town has said that it's impossible to know. And yet other towns, like Milton have gotten their consulitants to do this analysis with the money the state provided each town. See their full memo below [emphasis added]
- affordable housing- restaurants- farming
The Acton Water District has not told us how the zoning changes would impact the quantity/quality/cost of our water because the Town has refused to say how many condos could be created with the propose zoning. The Town has said that it's impossible to know. And yet other towns, like Milton have gotten their consulitants to do this analysis with the money the state provided each town. See their full memo below [emphasis added]
VOTE NO! on Articles 11, 12 & 13!
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How bad is the water capacity issue?
A few years ago [2018, actually] the Acton Water Resources Advisory Committee [WRAC] decided to look at how much water is needed for "build out". "Build out" is the point where builders have built as many homes as is allowed by current zoning. At that time, the no one anticipated MBTA Zoning. For reference MBTA zoning woud allow close to additional 3,000 homes in Acton. Acton currently has about 9,700 homes.
WRAC drew a graph to show various "uses" allowed under Acton's then-current zoning, and this is the graph. NOTE the RED line is the current limit on pumping water that the state set. The BLUE line is the allowable uses. Note that the allowable water uses is MUCH higher than the capacity limit set by the state.
Pro-building officials will tell you "not to worry" that the state can just raise the limit, and we can install more wells and fatter pipes. BUT there's been no aquifer [water source] studies to even know if we have enough water to supply the uses already zoned for, and still keep our aquifers healthy.
And so what would MBTA Zoning to do our water? WE DO NOT KNOW! that's why the Acton Water District wrote the memo we show above.
When the water capacity is "used up", then major infrastructure changes have to be made at the cost of existing water users and/or the Acton Water District has to ask for permission to pump more water and the neighboring towns and water experts can object. So it's a risk to allow the water to get used up by developers of UNAFFORDABLE HOUSING, because the water district can't say "no" if they have the capacity. So if it gets used up there will be no water left for community goals, or it would require such a high expense to get the water for community goals, that community goals will not be met. And we are pretty sure developers will race to get the water, because that's how the system works, right? We know that in Acton, at least, there is NO PLAN to reserve water for future community needs.