In these pages and elsewhere, more than a little ink (pixels?) and breath have been expended over the debate of how to fix Housatonic Water Works (HWW) and Monument Mountain High School (MMHS). To assess whether the rhetoric withstands real-world scrutiny, a couple of case studies might be in order.
Come with me then to the United Kingdom’s largest privately owned water company, Thames Water, which supplies water to 15 million customers in London and Thames Valley. Not an entirely unfair comparison, as HWW is Housatonic’s largest privately owned water company supplying water to about 15 million fewer customers.
We are familiar with HWW’s issues: brown water irregularly exceeding Maximum Contaminant Levels, improperly maintained pipes, aging infrastructure, underinvestment in its filtration systems. The trouble at Thames Water concerns not the delivery of potable water but the delivery of raw sewage into rivers and coastlines. As here, Thames Water underinvested in its pipes, so much so that 24 percent of the water it supplies is lost through leakage. As here, Thames Water finds itself financially unable to rebuild its systems, although it is in a larger, $18 billion hole. Let’s agree there are similarities in management deficiencies, but the depths of disrepair differ by some orders of magnitude.
At the end of June, Thames Water customers were alerted that dealing with the utility’s crisis—polluting waterways—would cause their water bills to rise 40 percent. For Thames Water customers, a very bitter pill to swallow. To which HWW customers would ask, what is all the bellyaching about? Facing a 112.7 percent increase, HWW customers could manage that increase standing on their heads.
Interesting is Thames Valley management’s reaction to the 40 percent increase. With a stiff upper lip, Thames Water Chief Executive Officer Sarah Bentley forfeited her annual bonus and—maybe this is a bit British—resigned. And what, you ask, did HWW’s management do in the face of seeking an increase nearly triple Thames Valley’s increase? Apologize? Provide bottled water to its customers? Help fund customer’s water filters? Acknowledge deficiencies and turn over the business to a public entity? No, that is what they should do but have not agreed to do. Dare to dream.
Respect for Sarah Bentley. All we can do is hope we feel the same for HWW’s management in the near future.
Now let’s travel a bit closer to home, to Holyoke. At the end of June, Holyoke, after years of controversy and voters turning down an earlier proposal (sound familiar?), got out party hats and horns to announce that the Massachusetts School Building Authority agreed to pay more than half—$46 million of an estimated $85.5 million—to build a new middle school for up to 500 students. The fortunate Holyoke sixth through eighth graders will have their slightly younger and less decrepit school—as compared to MMHS—replaced with a modern facility designed for 21st-century teaching and curriculum. You know, what MMHS students deserve.
Every politician is pleased to bring home the bacon, but the news reports suggest that something fundamentally more important is going on in Holyoke. Beyond replacing chalk boards with white boards, the local officials suggested it is about Holyoke signaling to students and families that the community deeply cares about and wants to invest in their futures by giving them the absolute best educational tools. When it comes time for our communities to consider replacing MMHS, we should similarly consider that the minimal rate increase buys far more than walls, windows, and white boards.
Last, and off topic, I would simply like to note an interesting debate carried on in these pages between Carole Owens and Great Barrington Affordable Housing Trust Fund member Joseph Method concerning the housing crisis. I commend both for attempting to ascertain the tangled roots of the housing crisis.
Like the weather, everyone complains about the cost of housing, but no one does anything about it due to natural forces beyond our control. The forces that are largely at the root of the problem—labor costs, building material costs, mortgage interest rates—are beyond the Selectboard’s power to control, which is not to say that government is entirely divorced from a partial solution. One cost component under our control, land costs, can be changed by rezoning two- and one-acre-minimum residential lots to far smaller minimum parcels.
The land cost component of new housing in Berkshire County is roughly one-quarter to one-third of the overall cost. Rezoning a one-acre-minimum lot to a minimum one-quarter-acre lot could reduce the land cost component by three-quarters, a non-trivial change; rezoning two-acre to one-quarter-acre lots reduces the cost by seven-eighths, and so on. The land cost component will never be nothing, but it can surely be far less. The point is this is something we can do.
Ms. Owens notes that our low density makes us an attractive place to live. The Stockbridge-Munsee tribe of the Mohican people no doubt felt similarly. When faced with adversity, as we are now, history tells us we must adapt to changed circumstances. Regarding density, we must change our way of thinking to serve the greater good. Housing is the greater good. We can reduce the cost of one of the critical inputs through the efforts of the Planning Board, Selectboard, and residents at Town Meeting. With reconsideration of minimum lot size, we can all be part of the housing crisis solution rather than continue to be part of the problem.
