Concord School Bus Proposal is Drinking Water Safety Concern

I included a similar letter in The Beacon 2 weeks ago, and offer the same message here for Patch readers.  This Thursday, November 7, The Concord Finance Committee is holding a public hearing on warrant articles for a Concord Special Town meeting.This hearing will be at 7:00 pm at the Concord Town House. These Articles include an article under which Concord would purchase a parcel of Privately owned land located on Knox Trail in Acton. This land woud then be used to develop a Concord School Bus Depot and Maintenance facility. 

The land on Knox trail is essentially a peninsula surrounded by a land currently or formerly owned by WR Grace.  For over 30 years, the EPA has worked with contractors to clean up waste materials left in this area by Grace and its predecessors and neighboring industries.  The Water District still treats every drop of water pumped from the nearby wells to remove residual contaminants, even though the last pollutants were poured into the ground over 30 years ago.

The idea of having dozens of buses stored, and potentially fuelled, lubricated, washed and maintained, along with the service traffic, is a step backwards to a time when Massachusetts residents buried our heads on the sand about the potential destination of materials poured or spilled or leaked onto the ground. 

It only takes one fuel cell leak, or one cracked oil pan, leaky radiator hose, or residue picked up on one set of tires and then washed off at the depot, to set back 30 years of cleanup effort.  Diesel fuel, Gasoline, Antifreeze, Windshield washer solution, exterior and interior cleaning chemicals: all these things can end up in Acton’s drinking water if this bus lot proposal is enacted.

Over the last 55 years, the Acton Water District has gradually acquired more and more land surrounding these 3 wells.  Just this year, in order to expand source water protection, the Water District spent approximately $700,000 to acquire land just down Knox Trail from the proposed bus storage facility.   There is potential over many decades to continue to make open market land purchases of source aquifer for these wells.  Once the land is owned by a municipality however, this potential will be gone.

This proposed use is thus incompatible with any long term vision for improving source water protection. 

Acton residents are not allowed to go fishing in or rowing on or even hiking around Acton’s most significant natural and historic recreational resource feature:  Nagog Pond.  This is because of source water protection rules for Concord Drinking water.  What would the Concord residents think if Acton proposed to store its school buses on a floating parking lot in the middle of Nagog Pond?  This is essentially the effect of the Concord School District proposal. 

Acton has a Bylaw intended to provide source protection for Acton's Ground water aquifiers.  I believ that this Bylaw needs to be reviewed, both for the location of some of the boundry lines used within the bylaw, and for the permissible uses of aquifier  land which, while it may not be immediately adjacent to Acton's wells, is definitely part of the water flow to these wells.

Thank you

Paul Malchodi