The Town of Woodstock’s Drinking Water Source Protection Plan Working Group has collaborated with state health officials to determine sources of contaminants and come up with ways to prevent them from entering the town water supply.
The group presented its findings to the town board on March 11, which was a follow-up to work promised at a town hall meeting on water concerns hosted by council member Anula Courtis last summer. The program involves locally led, states-supported source water protection.
“We’re not finished, but we wanted to come let you know where we are so far. And I think the plan is to come back when the implementation plan is all laid out. But we’ve done a lot of investigating,” council member Laura Ricci said.
Ricci, Julia Blelock and Arlene Weissman are the town working group members who collaborated closely with hydrogeologist Mike Forgeng and environmental analyst Paige Bogart of the state Department of Health. It was Blelock who told the town about the program. Also called by its acronym, DWSP2.
The program is broken down into three parts — assessment, strategy and protection, Bogart explained.
“The first stage is assess, and it’s really exactly what it sounds like. We identify where your source water is coming from, the contributing areas,” Bogart said.
“We’ll look at water quality and availability, map out and identify potential contaminant sources and then create source water maps, which includes a protection area around your source water, land use, land cover.”
The next step involves pinpointing areas to protect, then strategizing that protection.
“And then we develop a timeline for implementation. That’s about where we are right now with the Town of Woodstock. But we’re excited to move on to the next phase, which is protect, which is the most important,” she said.
“We have completed our source water maps and groundwater modeling,’ she said.
“In terms of what we’re prioritizing in the plan, we have a list of about seven ranked from high to low. Our first priority issue is PFAS. So the main goals here is to one, understand the current levels of PFOS, how they may fluctuate seasonally, what wells the contamination is contained to,” she said.
“After that, we can start to pinpoint sources. And the second goal is to reduce any future contamination that may occur. Our second priority issue is residential sources of pollution.”
A big focus is on septic tanks.
“If improperly maintained, they can introduce pathogens or other bacteria into the water source,” she said.
Another focus, said Forgeng, is bulk storage facilities, because there are five potential contaminant sources in what has been identified as the critical area.
“Four of them are petroleum bulk storage tanks and one is an automotive facility,” Forgeng said.
“The delineation looks like it was just drawn around the wells and the potential contaminant sources. It’s an absolute coincidence. That was delineated using a model that had nothing to do with these sites but they do fall nicely in that critical area,” he said.
“The next priority issue is transportation runoff, and the main focus here is to reduce the loss of road salt and herbicides into your water.”
The DWSP2 program will conduct a groundwater evaluation for the town aquifer, he noted.
“The main point of this evaluation would be to create a water budget so that we can say more about how much water you have to work with to inform future development and your resource management,” Forgeng said.
Supervisor Bill McKenna noted the town is doing its part to make sure municipal operations do not contribute to potential contamination sources.
“I just want to add for the town highway garage, the bulk diesel and gas has been moved out of the property. The diesel is over at the salt sheds and the gas is down at the water treatment plant for this very reason,” he said.
“There is also a containment system for that entire property. If you look down, it looks like little ponds with a lot of leaves growing. That’s to catch any contaminants and there’s an actual filter there.”
The next step is for the DWSP2 group to submit its report to the state. Following approval, the group will begin to implement actions, Forgeng said.
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