DEP: Lynn’s water supply ‘superior’

LYNN – The Water and Sewer Commission has won a state drinking water award for maintaining a safe drinking water supply system.”Your system is among the ranks of Massachusetts systems that have demonstrated superior levels of compliance,” Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection Drinking Water Program Director David Terry informed the commission.The Commission has been the recipient of the award in past years because of its efforts to provide Lynn residents with pristine drinking water. It has an extensive water testing and monitoring program and test results show that Lynn’s drinking water is in full compliance with all standards established by federal and state agencies that regulate pubic water supplies.Water and Sewer plans to spend $75,000 over the next three years studying ways to ensure local reservoirs and the Parkland Avenue water plant are safe from accidental and deliberate contamination. Homeland security officials ordered water supply providers across the nation to improve supply security following the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.A regional water monitoring association last week announced that Massachusetts’ deteriorating underground drinking water infrastructure threatens the public health, safety, and the economy are threatened by serious funding shortfalls.”The longtime ‘out of sight; out of mind’ mentality regarding these critical infrastructure needs can no longer be tolerated. Federal, state, and local governments must invest in rehabilitating and rebuilding this infrastructure before significant and far-reaching problems start to surface,” said Raymond J. Raposa, executive director of the New England Water Works Association.The Association claims most of the 21,000 miles of water mains in Massachusetts, as well as similar pipes in states across the country, were installed during the late 1800s, World War I, 1920s, and after World War II.Many water mains installed 100 years ago are still in the ground and approaching the end of their useful lives. More recently installed mains will be reaching the end of their useful lives during the next 20 years.The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that a total of $8.554 billion is needed in Massachusetts for the period from 2003 to 2022 to make necessary improvements to the commonwealth’s drinking water infrastructure.Without a new financial commitment from the state to share this cost with cites and towns, local water ratepayers will be confronted with dramatically increased water bills and/or face serious threats to drinking water quality as well as their public health and safety, said Raposa.”Consumers in this country can drink from virtually any public tap with a high assurance of safety. To maintain this level of safety, drinking water suppliers must have access to the funding necessary to make it happen,” he said.