Town Officials Discuss Medfield's Water Ban

Town officials discussed the effectiveness of Medfield’s mandatory water ban at the Aug. 2 Board of Selectmen meeting after selectman Ann Thompson addressed the issue in her selectman’s report.

Thompson said she wanted to make residents more conscious of the water ban and of their personal water use.

“There are signs up that say no daytime watering,” she said.

Town Administrator Michael Sullivan said the most effective way to enforce a mandatory water ban is to charge residents with a higher water rate.

“We’ve tried to do it different ways,” Sullivan said. “The most effective way seems to be to charge [residents] a much higher rate for watering.”

But even that method doesn’t always work.

“Some [residents] don’t seem to mind [higher water rates],” Sullivan said.

Assistant Town Administrator Kristine Trierweiler said the town currently enforces the mandatory water ban through its police force, but that method has its limitations.

“The police [go out] and do citations,” Trierweiler said. “The problem is we just don’t have the manpower to go out. We can barely get speeding citations or accidents, we can’t also then do the water. It’s trying to find a good balance. We’re trying.”

The water ban prohibits daytime watering from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and residents are to comply with the town’s odd/even watering schedule.

Ken Feeney, Medfield Department of Public Works Superintendent, said the odd/even water cycle schedule means residents living in houses with odd number street addresses can water on odd days and houses with even number street addresses can water on even days to “avoid having everybody pumping [water] at the same time.”

Feeney said the town’s last mandatory water ban was two years ago.

“We really had to get out there and enforce it because our pumps were pumping 24/7,” Feeney said. “You can’t keep pumping that way.”

Feeney said the town should be pumping “about a million gallons per day” but during the summer months can see that number increase to three million gallons per day.
“That’s just too high,” Feeney said. “There’s no reason to be using that much water.”

Feeney and Sullivan said residents should not be watering during the daytime, regardless of a water ban, because it is water wasted.

“You have to be pretty obtuse to water in the daytime because half the water you put out is evaporated,” Sullivan said.

Feeney said losing all that midday watering to evaporation only increases your watering problem.

“You want to [water] early morning so you can reduce your evaporation rate or in the evening,” Feeney said before offering watering tips.

Tips for Summer Watering:

• One inch of water is plenty: “People have to understand they have automatic sprinkler systems, which is great, but what I’ve asked them to do is rate their sprinkler systems and [see] how much water it can put out on its own in an hour,” Feeney said. “If you’ve got an inch, that’s tons of water. On an average summer that’s not too hot, that’s enough for the week, one inch.”
• Two inches for the Dog Days of Summer: “In this hot weather, maybe two inches would take better care of your lawn but that is still only watering twice a week.”
• Watering every day is too much: “Right now a lot of people are just [watering] every day,” Feeney said. “Some sprinkler systems are on during the rain, which is a shame – they should have sensor devices on them."
• Green is Green: “If your lawn’s green, then it’s green,” Feeney said. “You can’t get it any greener. Take it easy and plan and be careful.”
• Pay to Pump: “The higher you pump [water], the higher you pay,” Feeney said. 

  Sullivan said the State of Massachusetts will likely be asking towns to police water use by residents with private wells in the near future.

“It’s funny, I go for walks in the morning and I walk by houses that have signs [in their yards] that say ‘well water,’” said Sullivan. “The state now wants us to regulate private wells. So that will be an issue in a few years when we start telling people ‘you may have a private well but you can’t water anytime’ because the state has told us so.”

Thompson recalled a water ban 15 to 20 years ago in town, in which residents got creative to try and get around enforcement.

“I remember one really bad drought, maybe 15 or 20 years ago, people were turning their sprinklers on at two or three in the morning,” she said.

Trierweiler said Ashland, Millis and Framingham are other towns in the area that are currently under a mandatory water ban.