Phone Conversation with Housatonic Resident Kathy Regan and the DEP

Saadi Motamedi, DEP, called back this morning. Very nice man. He took a lot of time without rushing. Following is what we covered.

• He is going to try and track down an infrastructure map for us and will call back if he thinks of anything else he can do.
• Saadi agreed with me that the residents are basically on our own unfortunately as no one really has direct oversight over Housatonic residents since HWW is a private corporation. He told me about a poor town whose sewer company is private and they closed down and now they literally have no where to flush to. 

• Their department will not attend the DPU meeting on the 26th or be able to help us out in any direct way with this since the organizations are separate. I told him we stopped paying our bill and he did not scold me in any way but also said he could be of no help. I did ask specially about the fact that HWW is not meeting legal safety standards and he (like the DPU) said a lawyer is our only avenue for support. 
• They gave Jim approval for what he wants to do with the manganese etc and their job is to make sure HWW follows though and that to the best of their ability what he is planning on trying will work, but it is still basically an experiment that may not work. He said larger municipalities would try various options on only on a section of their infrastructure to see what happens, but in our case since we have a smaller supplier and infrastructure HWW has to try it on the whole town. So we all get to be the experiment -- this is not comforting. 
• He said HWW is not eligible for any state revolving funds because they are a privately owned corporation. He admitted that Jim's price hike is only a drop in the bucket -- so basically we get our rates more than doubled and that is by no means enough to fix the entire infrastructure, and what Jim is gong to try with DEP approval may not work. So our money will go into enhancing Jim's company so it's worth more and he can hire more people, but we could very well be in the very same position we are in now. Lovely. 
• Saadi said the only other way out to get state funds would be if the towns take over by eminent domain or the state takes over. He does not think (although he admitted he was not 100% sure) that a public-private partnership with the towns and HWW would lead to the ability to access state funds for assistance for the infrastructure repair. 
• Our only option for resident protection financially or otherwise would be a class action lawsuit. ​

Notes by Kathy Regan, Grove Street, Housatonic