At the Annual Town Meeting, residents will be asked to decide on the future source of Wayland’s public drinking water and consider what they are willing to pay for water quality, redundancy and access to a sufficient volume of water in the short and long terms.
The Town seeks increased capacity to deliver enough water to meet population growth and future safety regulations and provide redundancy for emergencies. The choice is hampered by significant risk factors from timelines and targets about health, finances, regulatory requirements and construction.
The projected cost for a base Massachusetts Water Regulatory Authority (MWRA) full connection is $22 million after taking the $7 million waiver of MWRA entrance fee. The permitting process takes a minimum of two years. Wayland and Kleinfelder, Inc., an engineering consulting firm, began the process in 2021 with an initial evaluation of its long-term water supply options.
There are two designs under consideration: source all water from MWRA or source from a dual system consisting of 85% local water from the Happy Hollow wells and 15% MWRA water. In the short term, MWRA water would supply peak seasonal demand in the summer. In the long term MWRA would supply water during peak daily demand. PFAS has not been found in MWRA water. Forty-five additional Massachusetts towns are considering joining the current fifty-one MWRA members.
A new permanent Happy Hollow filtration plant would replace the current emergency unit that was built under an temporary permit granted to address finding PFAS contamination. The permanent filtration plant and MWRA connection dual system is projected to cost less than the cost of 100% water purchased from the MWRA (calculated on the current 30% design mark.)
The debt service from the capital costs for a dual source system is initially higher. Within six to nine years of a (NPV) 25-year life cycle, the cost projections of the full MWRA and dual source system cross. Thereafter 100% of MWRA water becomes the more expensive system. Debt service modeling is being reviewed by the Abrahams Group.
A Dive into the MWRA and Wayland’s Public Drinking Water
The MWRA sends water from the Ware River watershed out of the Wachusett Reservoir to the John J. Carroll Water Treatment Plant (CWTP) in Marlborough. The water flows east to Boston through the 2003 Metrowest Water Supply Tunnel. The Tunnel is 200-500 ft below the surface, has an internal diameter of fourteen feet, and runs through Wayland underneath Dudley Pond. The MWRA connection will tap into the 2003 MWRA Metrowest Water Supply Tunnel L shaft, a steel-lined riser, as it surfaces near Elm Street in Framingham.
New connection piping will run from Elm Street underneath the 1940’s Hultman surface aqueduct, entering at its western Wayland boundary to rise at Old Connecticut Path around Castle Street where a pump station will be built. The new piping will then join to the Town’s distribution water main that continues north along Old Connecticut Path to the Town’s 1959 water tower at Reeve’s Hill. The water tower has a storage capacity of two million gallons.
The connection will involve building 5,000 feet of 16-inch diameter transmission main, adding a 3.5 million gallon per day pump station and upgrading the 8,000 feet of 8- to 16-inch diameter piping in a distribution main along Old Connecticut Path to handle the increased volume. For reference, most household water lines are eight inches in diameter.
Only the Happy Hollow well field has sufficient physical space for a filtration treatment plant site. The Happy Hollow wells were replaced in 2015 and are permitted for a maximum withdrawal of 1.41 million gallons per day. The 23-29 ng/L range PFAS levels are currently treated down to non-detect (ND). PFAS was first detected in raw water in February, 2021.
The raw water in all the Town’s wellfields have PFAS levels that will exceed the new EPA maximum contamination level (MCL) regulation on PFAS in drinking water. Effective April, 2029, the MCL regulation will be 4 ppt. Today, the current MCL regulation cap is 20 ppt and all town wells show a higher detection of PFAS than 4 ppt. The wells at Baldwin, Campbell and Chamberlain would be decommissioned.
As a “forever” class of chemicals, PFAS compounds number over 9,000. Commercialization began in 1948. The main representative compounds used in regulation of PFAS are PFOA (waterproofing/nonstick/stain resistant applications) and PFOS (firefighting suppression foams). Widespread consumer applications by Dupont and 3M began to ramp up in the early 1960’s.
Along with transport in water, soil particles contaminated with PFAS travel by wind around the world so background levels of PFAS now exist globally. A 2024 study by Woodard & Curran looked to establish background levels in undeveloped open spaces across Massachusetts, otherwise unimpacted by known or suspected sources of contamination. The study found that thirty-six PFAS are ubiquitous in surface soil samples (six inches deep). PFOS and PFOA were detected at the highest frequencies and at the overall highest concentrations. Concentrations of several PFAS exceeded the strictest MCP soil remediation standards (S1/GW) at twenty-one of the twenty-five conservation areas that were sampled. The PFOS concentrations found ranged around 1,000 ng/kg. The potential for PFAS in soil to leach to groundwater has not been well established.
The EPA and Mass DEP regulations attempt to legally characterize and regulate the risks to people’s health from exposure (ingestion, inhalation and dermal adsorption) by setting standards for what is safe or clean enough in defined situations for the general public. For the different categories of water: aquifers, drinking water, groundwater, surface water, stormwater or wastewater there is a corresponding MassDEP or DCR regulatory oversight and permitting requirements.
Wayland needs to demonstrate that “all practical measures” have been implemented to comply with the MWRA admission process for either dual source or full MWRA. Compliance includes water conservation and maintenance of conservation measures in accordance with the Local Water Resources Management Plan under Interbasin Transfer Act Performance Standards.
