Housing Production Plan Missing Key Information On Island's Capacity

To the editor: On August 19, the Planning Board and the Select Board will meet jointly to adopt the Town’s draft Housing Production Plan and send it to the state.

The plan’s own buildout study finds that under current zoning, as many as 17,432 additional dwelling units could be added on existing lots. The plan properly calls that a theoretical maximum rather than a prediction. But it is the Town’s number, in the Town’s plan.

What the 92-page plan does not contain is the other half of the equation. The word “gallon” does not appear once.

On wastewater, the plan says improvements to the Surfside facility are expected to grow in light of capacity constraints, and gives the Somerset sewer extension one sentence. It never supplies the numbers. What are our plants permitted to treat, what do they treat on an August day, how much is already committed to approved but unbuilt projects, and what is left?

Nor is there a price tag. The plan recommends expanding infrastructure and never says what that costs. “Capital improvement,” “betterment” and “ratepayer” appear nowhere in it. Every mechanism for paying—water and sewer rates, betterments, the tax levy, debt exclusions—lands on residents, and the plan identifies no contribution from the development the expansion is meant to serve. The word “taxpayer” appears once in 92 pages, in a recommendation that one inclusionary policy be structured “not at the expense of Nantucket taxpayers.” Applied to one policy, and to none of the infrastructure.

On drinking water, the omission is more troubling. Page 60 states that Wannacomet testing in 2024 found low levels of PFAS in one groundwater well, that our sole-source aquifer is highly vulnerable to contamination, that the facility serving our largest water district does not treat the water, and that a mobile treatment facility is being installed.

Now read Wannacomet’s 2025 Consumer Confidence Report. PFAS does not appear in it. Siasconset’s report, same department, same year, discloses PFAS6 at 2.86 parts per trillion—well below the state’s 20-ppt limit, but reported.

So: what was found in that well, at what level, and why is it in the housing plan but not in the report sent to customers?

That report also acknowledges that 2024 test results reached DEP late, that a Notice of Non-Compliance was issued, and that the notice “was not included in our 2024 Consumer Confidence Report as required.” Nor can a resident check whether this has happened before, because the 2025 report is the only one posted.

None of this establishes that our water is unsafe. It establishes something else: the information needed to evaluate the island’s capacity is scattered across departments and reports rather than assembled in the document meant to evaluate growth.

Before adopting the plan, both boards can direct that these figures be added. Put five years of water-quality reports back on the Water Quality Reports page. Publish PFAS results for every public-supply well. State the permitted, peak, and already-committed capacity of our wastewater systems, what expanding them will cost, and who pays.

And answer one more question: which board or department is responsible for looking at all of these systems together before additional development capacity is created?

Because right now, it is not being done. On August 19, the two boards most responsible for growth on this island will be sitting in the same room. That is the meeting to ask.

State regulations governing these plans—760 CMR 56.03(4)—require examination of “the capacity of the municipality’s infrastructure to accommodate the current population and anticipated future growth.”

Nantucket’s plan acknowledges that infrastructure constraints exist. It does not quantify them.

This is not an argument against housing. It is an argument for putting the capacity numbers in the plan before we adopt it and send it to the state.

Will Willauer
President – Nantucket Tipping Point