A Triumph Of Bureaucracy

To the editor: Chris Perry’s recent article, “We’re Not Going to Run Out of Water,” performed an important public service: it reminded Nantucket residents that drought and water scarcity are not necessarily the same thing and that we don’t control our own destiny when a state bureaucracy gets in the way.

Drought is a meteorological condition; running out of drinking water is a different question entirely. Wannacomet Water is actually bound by a restriction on its right to draw water. The irony is that our current predicament appears to be less a crisis of supply than a triumph of bureaucracy.

Nantucket is restricted because of the state’s monitoring system which uses a shallow well on Russell’s Way to judge our supply, while the quantity of available drinking water remains comparatively stable. Wannacomet officials have reportedly even offered to fund additional monitoring of the deeper system, only to be declined in favor of maintaining decades of historic data from the existing well – which measures the wrong thing.

I confess admiration for any regulatory framework that can look at a robust, deep aquifer complex, containing vast quantities of water and conclude that a hydrangea with a drip line poses a threat worth regulating.

No one is advocating waste. The Commonwealth is right to protect water resources, but good policy depends on measuring the right thing. If Nantucket’s actual water supply comes from an aquifer nearly immune from the drought, then our monitoring and regulations should reflect that reality. Rules should follow science, not the bureaucratic ease of measuring the wrong well.

Let’s hope Chris Perry’s article started an important conversation. We should be lobbying hard to convince the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EEA) which controls these restrictions that our drought regulations must be based on the most relevant data available. We need local government on-island to step up and prosecute the case. Take control into our own able hands. And keep Nantucket green.

Sincerely,
Ken Gentner