August 28, 2026
In her August 12 letter to MWRA, Governor Healey called for closer collaboration with the Quabbin host communities and outlined several ways the Authority might help. The MWRA Advisory Board believes the July Board meeting in Belchertown identified practical places to begin. There, municipal officials and residents underscored a difficult reality: some communities surrounding the Commonwealth’s largest reservoir struggle to secure reliable local water supplies. The question now is how MWRA can respond in a way that is fair, practical, and faithful to its responsibilities.
One is emergency response. When local police and fire departments incur costs responding to incidents directly tied to the watershed and regional water supply, those costs should not fall solely on the responding municipalities. We support MWRA and DCR in developing a straightforward process to document and reimburse those expenses. Local water supply calls for a different kind of help. We also support MWRA providing technical assistance and working with DCR to help host communities evaluate viable local water sources and navigate the necessary state review.
Additional payments, however, raise a broader question. When MWRA was created, it inherited responsibility for financing a regional water system supplied by the Quabbin Reservoir, along with obligations rooted in earlier Commonwealth decisions. For more than forty years, member communities and ratepayers have funded watershed protection, annual payments to watershed communities, and other measures long treated as reasonable costs of providing safe, reliable water. Any proposal for additional payments should account for those existing commitments and be considered through the Commonwealth’s broader review already underway, not decided in advance of it.
How any additional support is funded also matters. MWRA is already facing billions of dollars in essential water and sewer work. Those costs—and every new MWRA-funded commitment—reach member communities as assessments and ratepayers through local water and sewer bills. That burden can be particularly difficult for environmental justice populations and households already facing affordability challenges. We are ready to continue this work with the Healey Administration, MWRA, and Quabbin municipal officials. Our aim is practical help where MWRA can make a difference, clear responsibility for the commitments being considered, and fairness to every community affected.
Statement of the MWRA Advisory Board
