Water reporting concerns and suggestions to improve civic engagement

By Guest

Dear Editor:

I have an idea on how to improve civic engagement, and that improvement would be driven partly by a new method of communication from town hall.

My idea is that given that the town administrator probably already prepares an agenda and timeline for initiatives and other foreseeable projects, it would be great if he could share (non-confidential) sections of this report with residents by authoring a quarterly column in this newspaper.

The column could cover important and new initiatives in the administrator’s functions and in those departments under his authority.

For example, an area of interest to many of us is how the new leaders in the water department are addressing Canton’s stale and mostly inferior annual water quality report.

Unlike other towns in the area, Canton’s report doesn’t discuss how the water is tested or how it’s treated. These are fundamental requirements that Canton needs to include in its report.

In addition, unlike other towns, Canton has chosen not to disclose that the state found that our local wells are at significant risk of contamination from polluters who sit atop our wells and the well-feeding areas, and the steps, if any, Canton takes in its responsibility to work with potential polluters about discharge safeguards. The potential polluters identified by the state include a golf course, gas stations, manufacturing plants, commuter rail, highways and industry.

Another issue with the water report is it hasn’t provided accurate information about what percentage of Canton’s water is local versus how much of it comes from the state’s reservoir. The data in Canton’s annual report says it’s 50 percent local, while the data in Canton’s water report says it’s 80 percent local. In fact, adding to the confusion, the opening line of Canton’s water report, which is prepared by the MWRA, misleadingly states that our water comes from the Quabbin Reservoir. After reading the glowing highlights about how well the state does protecting that water source, most readers don’t get to the last page of the report — the Canton-specific section — where it states that most of our water comes from Canton wells, and as such, readers should mainly disregard the glowing data from the state. So that also needs to be corrected in the 2019 water quality report, and it should include an explanation for the errors in previously reported source data.

Fixing the errors and omissions in the water report is just one example of new and ongoing initiatives that would be good to hear about. Others would be things like planned improvements to the town website, enhanced agendas and minutes for boards that don’t currently provide them online, updates to traffic and speeding concerns, and of course updates on large capital projects.

Residents could also submit feedback to the administrator about areas they are concerned about.

Could the Canton Citizen offer this opportunity to the town administrator and work with him to print his quarterly column?

Thank you

Glenn Shane

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