WELLS RIVER — The village has a plan for this winter to manage an ongoing water crisis caused by a fuel oil spill near the village’s well last winter.
The village plans to continue hauling water from nearby Woodsville, a practice that has been ongoing since mid-July.
But trucking water up steep, narrow Royston Ridge Road to the reservoir won’t be possible in winter conditions. Already, in summer weather, one of the three rotating haulers was opting to fill his 6,400 gallon tanker truck only half full of water to ensure safe passage.
This winter, instead of driving water all the way up, all the trucks will empty into a holding tank and the water will be pumped uphill.
Engineers have proposed acquiring a 10,000-gallon tank for the project, according to a plan Middlebury Vt.-based Otter Creek Engineering submitted to the state Agency of Natural Resources in late September.
Normally, water is pumped from the well to the reservoir. The winter operations would involve installing a new pump and 4-inch water main to connect the storage tank to the existing system and send the water the rest of the way up to the reservoir. The new equipment will need to be insulated and partially heated to avoid freezing.
Questions remain
Response and remediation to the crisis has been ongoing since January when about 600 gallons of fuel oil spilled at a property 75 feet from the well that supplies drinking water to 120 connections in the village.
After months of monitoring, the village shut off the well in July to avoid potentially pulling contaminants into the drinking supply. In July, the village hired three water haulers to continuously run water between Woodsville and Wells River throughout the week to maintain the reservoir.
The effort, as well as ongoing cleanup work, has been effective in preventing the oil from spreading. Since January, no oil has entered the village well. And as of mid-September about 170 gallons of oil had been removed from the site, according to minutes from a Sept. 18 village meeting.
Since the outset, the village’s trustees and state agencies have questioned how the water hauling could continue through the winter.
“There are a lot of different situations over the course of a winter that could put a hamper on hauling no matter what we try,” Wells River Trustee Michael Thomas said in a recording of a special meeting last week. “We’re trying to think of all the different scenarios to be prepared.”
An environmental engineer from the state responded to the winter plan with several questions, including how long it will take to construct the system, what the cost estimate is and under which circumstances the trustees will decide the system has to be implemented.
The trustees said the storage tank and other equipment should be installed as soon as possible, ideally in the next three weeks, considering the impending winter.
“I’d like it in place long before it was really needed with the cold weather so we can fine tune it and get it working,” Thomas said.
The village’s engineering firm is acquiring an updated quote for the project and the water tank could be on site within a week of the village trustees approving the purchase, Robert Clark, the engineer for the project, wrote in an emailed response to the state.
Some other parts may take more time to get, Clark said at the Village Trustees meeting. The Wells River reservoir is at a higher elevation than the village’s well, so it will take special equipment to pump water from the storage tank near the well up to the reservoir.
“Most of the equipment is not off the shelf,” Clark said.
Cost concerns
So far, the insurance provider for Wells River Historic Housing Limited Partnership, the property owner of the Baldwin Block where the faulty fuel tank sat, has covered costs. But who will continue to pick up the costs and what those costs will be remains a top concern for Village residents and trustees.
Though there is not a current cost estimate for the temporary or long-term remediation efforts, the ongoing expenses are expected to exhaust available insurance coverage, Village attorney A.J. LaRosa of Burlington-based MSK Attorneys said at the meeting.
The village has been “on the state” to commit to using state funds to cover costs through the state Climate Superfund Act once the insurance money runs out, LaRosa said.
The law allows Vermont to collect fees from greenhouse gas emitting entities such as fossil fuel extraction companies or crude oil refiners to be used to fund climate change adaptation projects and implement other related grant programs.
The state is in a better position to seek payments from any responsible parties than the village is, he added.
The state “has not yet acted, but at least I’m hopeful that they recognize the position the village is in and will do what’s appropriate here,” said LaRosa.
The village also earned a $500,000 grant that can be redirected towards the long-term solution of drilling a new well, Engineering Consultant John Kiernan of RCAP solutions said at the meeting.
There is also an emergency grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture the village is in the process of applying for, though the ongoing federal shutdown has delayed that process.
In the short term, Kiernan said he expects the property owner will cover the cost of the winter pumping system.
We have “the information we have now, we have to make decisions based on that and we’ll have to adjust if things go off the rails, but we’ll figure it out,” Kiernan said.
