Water Resources Committee - Regular Meeting

presentation of the water resources study. Um I expect this presentation will take uh up to 30 minutes and um and but you know obviously we'll this is an important topic. We'll we'll take what we need but the the the target is to to do this in uh you know 15 to 30 minutes. 15 is probably on the aggressive side. But uh with that I don't know am I turning it over to Emily from Weston and Samson. Are you leading this charge? Well, hi everyone. Uh, my name is Emily DeFranco. I'm a team leader at Weston and Samson. Um, I've been working with uh, Les and the Water Resources Committee for probably about a year on this project uh, developing what we're calling the comprehensive water resources report. We wrapped this up last fall um, and we presented to the select board then uh, but it was uh, requested for for me to do a similar presentation for you all tonight. So, this is work we did a few months ago. Um, but it's a similar presentation to what I did a few to that to what I did in um I think it was October or November. So, uh feel free to stop me with questions along the way. This doesn't have to be formal formal. I'm happy for you to interrupt. Uh so, brief background or brief agenda. Um just going through the findings of the of the the work that we did, looking at the recommendations and next steps of the report that we worked on with Les and his group. uh and then any questions that anyone might have. Uh so looking at project background, this project came really out of the you know on the end of a lot of other studies that have been done that have looked at sort of you know drinking water feasibility um analyses of water resources within the town. Um but then al but wrapped it all up together with not just looking at your water resources but looking looking at water resources in the light of population growth and where that growth might go. So this is

sort of the background. We reviewed all of these studies and incorporated those things as needed in the report. So these were the project objectives. Here are the project objectives. Um essentially our first task was to conduct an analysis of your projected population. So looking at, you know, just census data and what was projected to come out um in the future, we looked at that as well as uh developing what's called a buildout analysis, which I'll go through to show where that development in the town may actually happen. Um that's gets limited by zoning, you know, zoning constraints, environmental constraints, things like that. That's all factored in. And then we also developed an inventory of all your water resources. So, you know, where all your water bodies are, um, surface water bodies, and any potential water quality threats to those resources. The next step was completing an assessment of your current drinking water demand and what your future drinking water demand might be based on those um, population projections that I mentioned earlier. And we also took a look at the groundwater recharge since most of your drinking water comes from the ground, from water under the ground. Um, to look at what that could support for the future. We also looked at your wastewater needs since most of the town is on septic systems. So what is where what does that look like now and what could that look like in the with the future and you know kind of linking that with any environmental limitations of some of the locations that are available for development in town and then we looked at a um sort of a highlevel water related regulatory review um that could guide some water management decisions. So, it's sort of a comprehensive taking a look at all of your water resources and potential issues that might impact those. So, I'll go through each of those things. Um, basically the first piece was looking at your population and you know 2020 was the most recent census year when we did this uh of about 5,56 people. The population projections, you know, looking both at the Census Bureau,

the UMass Donahue Institute, and then the the program that we did uh the buildout analysis through is called Community Viz. And those population projections out to 2050 show about a 28% increase in your population which this is not news. I mean this has been done in other studies but showing where that pop that additional population might go is sort of part of this. So how we looked at this um was conducting that buildout analysis I mentioned in um community viz. So essentially that program basically conducts both a numeric buildout. So basically just you know how many additional you know what is the increase in population just looking at numbers only not where that could be and then it overlays what we call to do what we call a spatial buildout which essentially looks for the locations where you know you could realistically actually have development in your town. So that's you know looking at your regulations. So, what are your setbacks? What are your existing uh environmental conditions? Like where what is the depth to bedrock and things like that that could limit the potential for where some of these buildings may go? And because we were doing a water resources study, we wanted to look at where, not just within the town, but where in the groundwater basins that you draw your water from that development may occur. I'm going to talk more about the groundwater basins in a minute, but essentially all of the, you know, you can see the divides with the red lines on this map over here on the side of my screen. Those are the six groundwater basins. And essentially, it shows you, you know, here they, you know, what is the potential or what is the area within the town of Boxboro, the number of buildings that already exist in those each of those groundwater basins, and then the number of potential they they call them dwelling units here. So basically what is the what are the amount of additional properties that

could go in in each of those groundwater basins. So essentially this buildout shows sort of that increase of 14% or about 263 available or potential new dwelling units within the entire town and how those are scattered throughout the different groundwater basins becomes important when we're looking at drinking water demand in the future. Any questions on that? We can circle back at the end. I'm happy to do that as well. I'm breezing through this. Yeah, it probably makes sense to run through it and unless there's a question along the way, we can probably table questions for the end, I think.

Sure, that sounds great. Yeah, it's a lot of information in this report and I'm trying to boil it down to a a succinct thing, but I don't I feel like I'm probably breezing over things that might not make a lot of sense, but that's okay. If that's true, you can stop me at the end. So um so talking a little bit more about the uh groundwater basins that I mentioned earlier. Basically your water supply comes from one of these six groundwater basins uh within this area. So it's you know they don't adhere to town boundaries to borders. They obviously don't right. That's how water works. It's going to go where it wants. Um but basically you know this is where most of your where all of your water comes. I mean, there are limited areas of town that receive water from interconnections with Littleton and Actton, but for the most part, this is where, you know, your water comes from one of these groundwater basins. Um, you rely primarily on private and small community water systems. So, most of the time, we're talking about a private well in the ground when we're talking about what that looks like. So, just moving forward on this, these are the groundwater basins when we just go down to the town level. You can see how they extend outside of the town. But essentially, we looked first at the current residential um demand for drinking water. That's done based on essentially just you know literature values and known values of what you know a typical home would consume. And we essentially came up with our estimated current demand for residential properties at about 130.4 millions of gallons per year. We estimated your commercial demand similar calculations at about 59.3 milligrams or millions of gallons per year. So a total estimated current demand at about around 190 millions of gallons per year. So that's you know pretty typical even what we found from some of the the previous research um previous reports. But what we wanted to look at then was how do we pair that? So this current demand here

that 189 something whatever that was um well how do we look at that and then move into the future. So our f our future demand when we add those additional buildings and that in that buildout analysis it looks like you know there's sort of a low and a high end. We can predict how much residential demand is likely to happen based on the available lots, but for commercial, it's really hard to say because it depends on what they're putting in there, you know. So, we basically went with the available commercial lots at the smallest scale, the smallest amount of water they can consume versus the highest based on what they could actually put in. And so, that's why we have this range for future demand. So this 607 would be sort of your worst case scenario in the future based on the buildout analysis and that's an increase of anywhere from 8% to 221% um when we're looking at how much water is being taken out of the ground. That sounds like a lot but at this moment we haven't talked about how all that water gets back into the ground and what that might mean. So these six groundwater basins um like I mentioned they go through Littleton, Harvard, Bolton, Stow, Actton um Boxboro alone only occupies about 27% of the whole land area that these basins you know basically occupy. So we can't because of the way that um groundwater basins work, we can't just calculate the recharge. When I'm talking about recharge, it's how quickly do those groundwater basins get filled back up with water after it rains. Essentially, that's what that means. So, we can't calculate that for just the Boxboro portion of any of those groundwater basins because there's just no way to say water's going to stop here for sure. That's just not how it's going to work. But what we can calculate is looking at the recharge rates for the

entire six basins together and the basically the present day recharge is about 6,000 to almost 16,000 millions of gallons per year. And when we're looking at your future demand, the high high estimate level is about 607. So is it possible that Littleton is then taking 10,000 millions of gallons per year? possibly, but it's unlikely when it's that it seems to us when we look at this from I had Kevin McKinnon who is our hydrogeeologist looked at look at this as well and that is a good balance in his mind that you will have enough water to be able to recharge your groundwater basins moving forward. Um, again, we can't just cut out Boxboro from this and and isolate exactly what that recharge would look like, but based on this analysis, um, and and what we know here, it seems to be an adequate amount of water. Um, so I'm going to keep going. We also did a wastewater assessment. essentially, you know, with the all of the properties in your town for the most part being on septic systems, uh there's not a lot of, you know, even with Title 5 in Massachusetts, there's still not a lot of information that most towns have electronically on septic systems. And so we wanted to do sort of a highle analysis just to begin tracking some of that um especially, you know, as more properties may get put in in the future. And when we're looking at the number of essential, you know, properties or parcels that are existing currently in Boxboro, it's around 1,700 or or so. So then based on, you know, we this is essentially a GI GIS analysis where we then look at the total properties with residential area. And so about we we estimate that about 1357 properties in Boxboro have septic systems of some some kind. We then basically went through whatever records we could find. Well, actually before we

did that, we first conducted a GIS analysis to essentially assign, you know, different um the location of different different septic systems received a tier based on where they were located in town. So, we called the tier one or the ones we'd be want to make sure not not necessarily worried that a septic system is there because if a septic system is in and it's functioning properly, that's fine. But it's just this would indicate to us that of all the areas, if they're in the tier one areas, those septic systems, if they failed for some reason, could have a larger water quality impact than if they were in a tier a tier three area. So, a tier one property was essentially categorized as anything that was situated within a flood zone. Um, they had limited soils. They were located within 100 ft of um water body or wetland. And then tier 2 properties essentially just take some of those those uh limitations out. And then tier three is essentially everything else. So most of the properties within Boxboro are located um in tier 3, but the tier one and the tier 2 properties you still have a decent amount in there. Um so let me talk about what that what we did with that. So we then essentially looked at all available septic system records for those tier one properties. Um, you know, looking at either you, you know, paper records from the Nohova Board of Health, um, looking at Title 5, anything that gave us any information about the age of the septic system, the date they were inspected, anything like that, if there was an OB, you know, a known distance to to the groundwater well on the property, things like that. So, we essentially, you know, looked at those hundred and I'm forgetting the number. Um, let me go back to that one with me go back here with the 164 tier one properties and we were able to say that from those and the records that we could

find, we couldn't find records for all of those. Um, that, you know, none of them were less than 10 years old that we had records for. So, we didn't have records for all 143. Um but the ones we did have records for we saw that many of those 60 of those were those septic systems were greater than 20 years old. Um which is which is an old septic system at that point even if it's being maintained or at least it's on the on the older side. Um from those the ones that we had dates for inspection some of them hadn't been inspected since you know the '9s. Um and then some of them were located um you know closeish to a groundwater well. Again, that doesn't necessarily mean that there's a problem. It just means if there ever was a problem, it could cause a a water quality problem in the town. Uh so that is that um those are sort of the main findings. I'll go through some of the recommendations um and the next steps. Um these recommendations are a mix of things that you know our wastewater engineers and drinking water engineers recommended as well as our planners. um but also working with less and the water resources committee as well. So, you know, a lot of times when we're talking about septic systems, we're not necessarily saying, "Okay, now you need to enact a pumpout ordinance and make everybody in tier one pump out." I mean, that's I have worked with towns and that is what they've done, you know, based on this information. They've created something like that. Um a lot of times it's just educating homeowners. Um, a lot of homeowners don't know that they have a septic system, which is, you know, you know that, you know, that's that's just how it is. Or if they do know they have it, they don't know that they they don't know why it's so important that they maintain it. Um, so developing materials for specific homeowners that are located either in an area where, you know, they're in a tier one area or they're near a water body or something like that. Um, also not just for septic system ma maintenance, but also for potentially sampling their

drinking water. um in their well to see sort of what what they might have. Um we've talked about developing a townwide drinking water sampling program to assess the water quality of private wells. This study was focused and I probably should have said this earlier not on water quality. All of these um especially septic systems have the ability to potentially impact water quality. But when what we were doing with the drinking water program in particular was looking at quantity. Will there be, you know, enough water based on, you know, the information we have? Um, water quality is a separate, you know, we we mention water quality when we're, you know, documenting the water resources, surface water bodies in the report and looking through, you know, impaired water bodies and things like that, but for the most part, we were looking at quantity. Um, another recommendation was to add to the septic system inventory by, you know, essentially just expanding it beyond tier one properties to include tier 2 and three. that sort of gives towns the beginning of a way to to track what's happening um with particular properties. That doesn't mean, you know, there's no regul regulatory aspect to that at this point, but I have again, like I've mentioned, worked with towns who have then developed a pumpout ordinance and they've used these inventories as the beginnings of a way to track something like that. Um, we've also noted that expanding this study beyond Boxboro's town boundaries could help us um really look drill down a little deeper on the recharge and making sure it could support the full basins. Um, but again that's, you know, that's we are limited by the town boundaries in some ways, but the water is not. Um other other recommendations were to identify additional properties to be placed under conservation and locating those in specific areas throughout town. Um evaluate the town's firefighting related uh water needs where that water might be

coming from. That was you know we discuss fire ponds in the report but we don't specifically look at the demand. Um and then other recommendations are to continue to discuss regional water supply options with neighboring towns. um follow up with further evaluations recommended in this report, including additional work needed to address any actions in the town's master plan that relate to water um water topics. And then um if you have other suggestions or recommendations to just work with less and the water resources committee on and getting them sort of you know at least discussing them either with us or um with the committee. So that I'm happy to take any um questions uh if anyone has any now or I could go back to a slide if if that's needed as well.

Great. Thank you Emily. Appreciate you taking us through that. Um board any comments? Chris Dowy, I see you raised your hand. Um, sorry if it's if it's in the full report, so might be asking a question that I should have should know the answer to, but how many um tier one like uh residences have septic systems versus tier 2 versus everybody else?

I'll go back to that. There's a slide with that. So these are um the tier one out of the 1300 or so properties in town with septic systems about 164 of those are located in tier one areas. Which color is that in this? Well, it's actually So it's hard to see here. It's actually this dark gray right here. Okay. Yeah, I had to squint. It's been a while since I've looked at that map up close. So yeah. And then you can see most of them are in the um tier three.

Okay. And and some of those are especially on the west west end there's a bunch of um like condos. So there would be higher density Yep. people there. Yeah.

And again if it's a newer system that's being maintained that's fine. It's okay to have a septic system in a tier one area. That information is not to, you know, indicate that people shouldn't put, you know, a house in a tier one area or put a septic system in if that's the way that you deal with waste water in your town. It's just sometimes, you know, those homes, you know, just might need to be educated that maybe they should be pumping every couple years as opposed to, you know, one every year, you know, as opposed to some other properties that might be maintaining less. So, it's just a way to sort of look at where we might want to prioritize things like that.

Um, I guess just from from like your general work, do you have a sense of the average, you know, mass resident homeowner um or in comparable towns to ours? How often are people actually like pumping their their septic? Cuz like I know what I do, but I don't know if I'm more or less diligent than others. Well, I would say if you're pumping your septic system ever, then you are ahead of a lot of people. And that's where I'm talking about education. It's not because people aren't willing to. Sometimes it's because they literally don't know that they are supposed to uh or they don't know how to or they, you know, whatever it is, unless there's a problem, a lot of people don't even think about that, which is not unusual. I mean that's everywhere not just Massachusetts not just New England you know and so that's I work with a lot of lake comm lake communities where that is the biggest push what they do is just push the education or they you know push out information where here's a list of you know septic haulers that can pump your system you should be doing it every 3 years or so whatever whatever it is that you know it's decided and they send those specifically to like shoreline residents in in these lake properties that in the lake projects I'm talking about and that helps. It's one of the biggest help in some areas where people don't know that that's an issue. So education, I always put education as the first step when you're dealing with septic systems and then getting into the more stringent things down the road. Most of the time it's just letting people know.

Yeah. Because I think most people would not want to deal with the consequences of No. Okay. I was just curious of the overall scale of like how how many people would have to be notified. Uh that kind of thing. Okay, Chris, is that it? Um if that's it, Chris. Mark, I see your hands up. I'm just going based on what I see. So, as the hands come up, go ahead, Mark.

Mark, sorry. Uh, thanks Rich. Great job, Emily. That was uh actually a great presentation. I'd like to get a copy of that one, though, because that one doesn't match the one that's in my packet. My packet is bigger. This one's kind of more concise. And

sure to get them both because it's very helpful. Um so so my understanding of this um all of what you've done in the last year I is is really about the quantities and you said that earlier and not the quantity and so basically I think we're okay on the quantities given the recharge vers what we're putting back in versus what we're taking out right but the quality is always a concern and that's obviously you know with PAS um

uh particularly in certain areas of the town and so how does this report relate to the water quality issues aside from the septic system

right uh well we do discuss in the report potential water quality issues and things you can do and I'll just go back to the recommendations um you know back to the educational materials like we we don't have data from everybody's well, right? We can't look at all the homeowners private groundwater wells. Most of them haven't necessarily been sampled, but you know, either providing education again to homeowners of here's what you should sample for, here's how to do it, here's numbers to call, you know, here's why, that kind of thing. Um, that's one end of the spectrum. The other end is developing an actual systematic townwide drinking water sampling program to actually get a handle on the water quality of private wells. Um that's a that's a hot topic at Mass D. Um not just at Massachusetts either. Many many towns are and states are starting to really look at you know the water quality of private wells because they're just not regulated. There's no you know requirement unless we know that something is wrong. That's when you know the issues come up. Um so that's the report does discuss that um the potential you know water quality issues but there was not an assessment under this study. This was more like I mentioned quantity but it does recognize that the next steps should take a look at what you're dealing with um in that groundwater for quality.

Okay. So, so I guess when I think about water quality, um I I know that septic systems figure prominently in it, but right here it figures massively in it. I mean, basically the septic what we're putting into our septic systems is the determiner of our water quality. It's not like it's coming from other places. Uh, you know, like one of the things, you know, we we understood a long time ago is when we put our our dump, our we place it right on top of a of an aquifer or uh that 495, Route 495 runs right through the middle of town and there's, you know, huge amounts of oil and salt runoff. And so, I mean, how do those things get addressed and and how do those things um percentage-wise? I mean, I guess my understanding from from what I'm seeing here is the the the lion's share of our water quality quality issues emanate from our septic systems.

I don't know if I would say that for sure yet. I would want that's the that's the the I mean there's going to be you know you know you have paws in some wells in your town that's normal for this area but that's historic contamination that can be coming from septic systems but that's not necessarily the cause you can get saltwater intrusion from things like road runoff and storm water run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run runoff into your groundwater wells it's all it's all connected so yes I I definitely agree that septic systems and what's happening with them, maintaining them in the best way possible will help with the groundwater quality, but without knowing sort of our baseline, it's hard. I I don't think that I could say one way or the other what that quality might be. Um, but is it a source a potential source of bacteria, nutrients, PAS even? Yes, for sure.

Okay. So there the so there's more than septic systems and that are contributing to our water quality and and so I mean this just kind of makes me feel like well we got to really address our water quality issues via septic systems but there's more to it than that. So what's really in order to determine what that is, what's the next steps that are required again?

Sampling the wells. I would say getting a baseline. It doesn't have to be every well in town. Um you know we've spoken with less about you know we can help deter we can help create what that sampling program looks like. A lot of times it's voluntary where you, you know, provide educational materials and the resources and then ask explain to people what you're doing and then they will hopefully get their wells sampled and then sent back, you know, to us to include in a database. Um, not all people are going to want to do that. That's part of the the private it's the the issue with private wells and septic systems everywhere. It's hard to get people to want to to look, but when they start understanding why it they become more willing. Um,

are people unwilling to test?

Well, because there's some nervousness around, you know, you're going to make me spend more money if something's wrong. You know, that's and and I find it's easier to get people to do something like sample their well than than let you inspect their septic system. That's what I found cuz there's, you know, it and it's just it's about the education and the presentation. So, we just need to be careful in that wording, I think. Um, but you all know your town and the best way to inform people. I mean, there are also ways we can try to provide, you know, come up with some ideas to provide funding for the sampling for these wells. Um, do some targeted sampling on areas that we might think might be of more concern um than others. But getting a baseline on what that water quality is is, I think, I think a really important next step. And we talked about that at the select board meeting when I was there. I think that was October. Okay, thanks.

All right, thank you. Um, Cindy,

yeah. Uh, hi Emily. Thank you so much for coming. Um, I I um I think this is a real valuable presentation. I was I was actually the one who was pushing to have you come back and give this to the planning board and uh and other folks because it is such valuable information and it is um you know some of the genesis of this came from planning board discussions several years ago about trying to get our arms around um sort of baseline both quantity and quality of the water in town. So you guys have hit a lot of the uh things I think that we are are very interested in. So, thank you again for for and making it so digestible for uh for us. Um, couple of follow-up questions. Um, I I think um regarding the uh the well issue um and I think there might be somebody from the board of health on on this call, but I believe the board of health just adopted new private well regulations that require um the owners to um test their well uh upon sale.

Yes. And um if folks have questions about that, this might be a an opportunity for for someone from the board of health to to give a quick overview. But I believe those regulations have been adopted. Um so and that information I believe is public. Um so I don't somebody from the board of health on Yeah. If somebody from the board of health and you can just raise your hand, that'd be great. Um, less Fox.

I'm not Yes, thanks. Uh, Rich, I'm not on the board of health. U, but I can speak a little to that. As Cindy says, there are new board of health regulations related to this very topic. I don't remember. Mr. Clemens, who's also on the call, might recall, but they are already either effective or about to be effective within a matter of a month or so. But these regulations uh well regulations require the testing of wells that are either new uh on new property or a new well on old property that was already inhabited or on transfer of property. So this is a new thing for the town. We will now be able to get well water quality data from wells, but it will be a small sample because there aren't that many houses being built or transferred relative to the number that already exist. But at least it's a beginning and we'll be able to gather the information. Now, the thing that uh Emily alluded to is that some people might not really, you know, embrace the idea of testing their water because they're nervous about what they might find. Uh, of course, the issue there, one of the issues there is that if PAS is found, um, then you must uh report that to D and if the level's high enough, you have to remediate and that can be expensive. So that's why you don't see a sudden rush for people taking up um the idea of testing wells in in great quantity. If you remember some years ago D had a program with us where they tested 40 private wells for PAS. Uh there were a number of takers on that. It was a relatively small number and uh by and large not not much uh of concern was found but there were a few that were found and people had to take measures. So, it's kind of like if you don't know about it and it's not reported, you don't have to deal with it. But once you know about it, you have to deal with it. And then it's always a personal call as to what do you want to do to treat your water for not just PAS,

but other things that can be that that you might not like. For example, the level of salt. So, it's a complex topic and it does involve money and that's why it's kind of a gnarly question.

I'll jump in there just for a second. less that's becoming more common throughout Massachusetts that people are adopting those um regs those similar type of regs for uh sampling um kind of like a title five you know for septics but for wells um really that you know launching something like that and having an educational you know backing to it where you're showing people why it matters PAS is a scary one because it's it's very expensive to treat but there's you know, people don't want to be drinking water with bacteria in it either or salt or tastes and odor and things like that that are more easily treated um and and what that means and and what it could do, you know, and how easy and it's not that PAS can be an expensive test, but there's other tests that can be done that, you know, will speak to the quality of your water and protect your family. So getting that message out there in the right way, not just that this is something that we're trying to figure out so that we can make you spend tens of thousands of dollars to fix, but just for the general health of the public, I think is an important um message for this.

Yeah, absolutely. Uh I mean we're going to the water resource committee has not yet formalized what we're going to do next but uh the things are likely to be the educational piece educate people about testing their wells and how important it is just for the basic uh portability uh requirements that you do when you put in any well and the other one is to do proper septic system maintenance. There are people who move into town who don't realize they even have a septic system until they brought the property. Um, so education is a big deal here and we have to work on that. Get people to take care of what they've got. Great. Um, Cindy,

I just had one more question I wanted to raise or point I wanted to raise and that is um, you know, I've talked to the water resources folks and the planning board a little bit about having a review of our our act for protection district use regulations and you know I did sort of a a quick comparison with the state's drinking water regulations but I would like to uh encourage um, and I don't know if it would be through water resources as a recommendation for future study by Weston Samson but You know, I I think it would be helpful to do a regulatory review of our aquifer protection district use regulations to ensure that the things that we are being as um protective as possible um of our APD. Now, granted, you know, water outside of our APD could could drain into our APD, but the regul use regulations at least limit

the types of things that can be allowed in the APD. So, I'm kind of using this as an opportunity to recommend that uh we or the the town in some way uh whether it's through water resources or planning board um consider a review of those use regulations and perhaps uh you know pay a consultant to do that and um determine whether we are there are things that we might want to add or uh or be more protective of. That's great. Great.

Thanks, Cindy. Um any other board comments? I think we hit everybody. Emily, I'll just uh ask one question and then just sort of follow up on what Wesh what Les said to foot stomp that. But if you live in a tier one area, if you have a tier one septic system, do you know that today? No. Well, if you read the report, which the absence of reading the report?

No, that's and that's part of that uh you know, I like to think everybody reads my reports. Come on. I'm just kidding. But um no, but that'd be part of that, you know, when we're that'd be the next step. Nobody knows yet. Um but just telling them that doesn't mean anything unless we're recommending what they do and why it matters. So that's part of these sort of this first tier or the first bullet here the you know basically that's a way to prioritize even how you're doing your education sending out you know very targeted flyers or whatever it is to with information about you're in a tier one neighborhood this or you know parcel that's what this means this is what it could you know this is what you could do to protect the water quality of your drinking water as well as nearby um water bodies. So targeting the education to the tier one properties that would be how that would probably come out I guess.

Okay. Yeah. And it's not to create panic. It's to really create to provide information so that people can take appropriate actions and understand the risks. And then I I'll foot stomp it. I think it really does come down to education. Um I agree with what Les said is people, you know, when you when you go into a program where you're disclosing your results and there are potential ramifications, people might just say, "I'll just do it on my own. I'll find my own test and I'll deal with it on my timeline. So that I think education is important and um and yes, testing is critical, but there's a large testing program I think is you know that's a that's a that's going to be a hard thing to to just make happen like right away.

Absolutely. I agree with you on that, Rich.

And I mean there's no I mean this is one of the top issues in Boxboro. So thank you for the work the water resources done and the work you did in putting this report together. You know, Mark kind of said it. We have we have the qual, you know, the quantity, I guess, and I appreciate, you know, looking at the at a basin level, the quality is critical and how we can man, you know, we can't control all of that on our with our septic tanks, right? It's a lot of things that have to come into play. So, thank you for for sharing it. It's a great report. Um, I do see Liz Maritz, I see your hand up. I'll go ahead and take your comment. Hey. Uh, thank you, Rich. Um, yeah, really interesting, um, presentation. Uh, so clear and, uh, succinct. I love the, um, uh, the graphics as well. Um, I did have a question on quantity though, Emily, about, um, how is the recharge based on just average rainfall over, you know, that we've experienced in the past? And is there any sort of looking at sensitivity to potential periods of drought or, you know, going, you know, forward? Uh I I I can't remember what the time horizon is. Is this 25 or 50 years? I can't remember.

Mhm. Yep. It is 50 years. But this is um the recharge is not just based on prec precipitation. It's also based on soil type and about 50 other variables that are high. Okay. misunderstand that I that I can look at the output and say that makes sense and they're outlined in the report. Um, but it's it's one of those, you know, that's how recharge is calculated essentially. Um, and it it should take into account periods of drought as well as, you know, what is happening modern day. Um, okay. Rain as well. Thank you. I had no I had no idea there was anything besides just rain that went in into that calculation.

I didn't I Yeah, it's a whole thing. That's why we That's why we have specialists. I've learned that we say, you know, you just go ahead and figure that out for me, please, and I'll come back on the other side. But yeah, well, thank you very much. Of course. Great. All right, Emily. Thank you very much.