Public works director warns of water‑supply strain; board discusses meter rollout and funding options

Nate, the town’s public works director, told the board the water system experienced frequent days last summer with production above 1,000,000 gallons, and that low river and pond levels have reduced intake reliability, creating a risk to sustained production.

"We're running between 5 and 700,000 gallons a day on average, and last summer we had many days over 1,000,000 gallons," Nate said, describing instances when low river flow and pond levels limited pump performance. He said the plant has technical constraints — pumps and impoundment sizing — that limit how much additional raw water can be processed without infrastructure upgrades and that replacement pumps are expensive and have long lead times.

Nate recommended a shift in town policy toward conservation and a metering program. He described a neighboring town’s experience, where the installation of meters and an initial year of shared usage data prompted residents to reduce consumption by roughly half. Board members discussed meter technologies (drive‑by reading vs. cellular endpoints), the ability to remote‑read meters and add leak detection, and the equity implications of moving from a flat rate to volumetric billing.

Members asked staff to gather updated vendor pricing and options and to explore grant and impact‑fee funding to help cover installation costs. Nate said he would request per‑unit installation prices and options and return with a proposal the board could consider during budget deliberations. The board also discussed protections for low‑income residents and the use of a base rate to mitigate hardships while incentivizing conservation.