Eastham Town Meeting OK’s plan to build municipal water system

Eastham Town Meeting on May 5 approved a plan to begin building a municipal water system, a goal that town officials have pursued for decades.

The $45.8 million proposal, which received more than 80 percent of the vote, had failed to obtain the required two-thirds majority in previous years.

The vote came after years of testing by the Department of Environmental Protection in a neighborhood near a former landfill. More than 40 homes in the area have been eligible for bottled water provided by the town due to groundwater pollution.

Overall, more than 2,000 properties, many of them in the town’s business district along Route 6, will eventually be hooked up to the new water system, which will draw water from three town wells, according to Town Administrator Sheila Vanderhoef.

Interest in creating a municipal water system in Eastham dates back to 1969. The initial goal, Vanderhoef said, was to build a water system in six stages that would eventually cover the entire community.

“What we finally did is what we are calling Phase 1 of the backbone of the system,” Vanderhoef said. “It includes the major components of the system, and it allows the more complex parts to end up getting installed,” including major piping near Route 6.

The plan is to use the Clean Water State Revolving Fund to finance the 20-year project, which is expected to get underway in fiscal 2017. The fund’s lending rate is currently 2 percent.

The new water system will improve the town’s firefighting capacity, as it will eventually put roughly 80 percent of homes and businesses within 1,000 feet of a fire hydrant, according to Vanderhoef.

The municipal water project, she said, could eventually reduce fire insurance rates.