Parched: Tiverton, Little Compton, Westport gasp for water

By Tom Killin Dalglish
Posted 10/8/16

TIVERTON, LITTLE COMPTON, WESTPORT — Drought has hit the Tiverton, Little Compton and Westport communities, and has sharply limited the availability of water needed to fight fires and, in some cases, for drinking. Last weekend’s rains helped a bit but it will take much more of that to make a real difference.

“It's going to take a lot of rain to fill the ponds up," said Little Compton Fire Chief Rick Petrin, who said the 12 pond locations he normally uses to obtain firefighting water have dwindled to two. He said the town hasn't had a big fire in two months

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Parched: Tiverton, Little Compton, Westport gasp for water

Posted

TIVERTON, LITTLE COMPTON, WESTPORT — Drought has hit the Tiverton, Little Compton and Westport communities, and has sharply limited the availability of water needed to fight fires and, in some cases, for drinking. Last weekend’s rains helped a bit but it will take much more of that to make a real difference.

“It's going to take a lot of rain to fill the ponds up," said Little Compton Fire Chief Rick Petrin, who said the 12 pond locations he normally uses to obtain firefighting water have dwindled to two. He said the town hasn't had a big fire in two months.

"We're in dire need of water. Unless we get substantial rain, we're in trouble," he said. "Our neighbors in Westport are in the same boat we're in. Everything in Westport is dried up."

One Little Compton source estimated that the wells serving around 20 families have dried up.

For fighting fires in town, Chief Petrin said, "we rely mainly on pond water, and most of our sources are now inaccessible or have no water. I've never seen it like this."

There are two working hyrdrants, he said, one on West Main Road and one in the center of town. But ”If we get down into Adamsville Village, we're out of luck. Adamsville Pond is dried up. The Crandall Road hydrant is dried up."

(There is an upside, he said. Dried-up ponds allow maintenance to be performed on them. "We can go in there and clean them up.")

Little Compton's fire department relies on mutual aid and a tanker task force of trucks from Westport, Tiverton, Middletown, and Warren (Portsmouth has no tankers).

A burn ban in Little Compton has been in effect since the end of July, Chief Petrin said. "We're coming into our brush fire season. The leaves are drying out. Everybody likes to burn leaves but we're not going to allow it."

"The town has a lot of houses with wood shake roofs," Chief Petrin said. "It doesn't take much of an ember to get a fire burning. And a lot of people have mulch around their homes which is a hazard, and this happens in real dry conditions."

Tiverton now has a burn ban on outdoor fires also, Tiverton Fire Chief Robert Lloyd told the Tiverton Town Council last week. "One warning, and the second time you will be cited," he said.

"This is the time of year when we should be replenishing the ponds, and it's not happening," he said. "The situation is going to get worse if we don't get significant rain."

Stafford Pond's water level is down 22 inches, he said.

Stone Bridge Water Authority's Superintendent Carl Destremps confirms the Stafford Pond figures, and said, "the pond's lower than we normally see at this time of year," but he also said "people don't need to worry” about the availability of drinking water from the reservoir.

Paul L'Heureux, general manager of the North Tiverton Fire District concurs. "We purchase our water from Fall River and the Stone Bridge Water Authority," he said, "and we've received no notice from them as to any restrictions," and no notices about conserving water.

"We're also heading into a lower water consumption time frame," he said.

"Nonquit Pond level is down 105 million gallons, from a capacity of 440 million gallons, and Newport Water Authority is no longer drawing water from the pond," Chief Lloyd said. Borden Brook and Pachet Brook are dried up or down to a trickle, he said before Saturday’s rain.

"We have no idea how far-reaching the water issue is in the south end of Tiverton ," Chief Lloyd told the Tiverton council last week.

Chief Lloyd is also the town's emergency management director, and his concerns go beyond fighting fires and include public health issues caused by dry wells, water shortages, and water contamination, all of which may result from drought.

"There is no registration that tells us who has wells in the south end of town — lots of wells went in before records started being kept," he said.

"I know there are a dozen households without water or that have water issues right now in the south end," he said. "This is the time of year when we should be getting the rainfall to regenerate, but it's not happening."

He said the town is very close —"we're on the very edge" — to declaring an emergency, a declaration that he said means the situation is bad, and health and safety are at risk. Already the fire safety threshold level has been reached, he said, but what remains to be determined is the health safety issue.

Working closely with Chief Lloyd on the water issue, is Patricia Hilton, chairwoman of the Tiverton Conservation Commission.

"In Tiverton, we don't have an aquifer. We have fractured bedrock," which is why, she says, wells are of different depths in the effort to reach a vein of water.

"In a drought, there may be veins that may not have water in them," she said. "In a well that's gone dry or is not performing well, there may be a risk that water quality may be impaired."

She identified some of the indicators that water quality may be compromised: smell, the well is not re-charging, air-sputtering, sediment in the water, and the water tastes or looks funny,

"If any of these conditions are occurring," she said, "people might consider getting their water tested."

The dry-well issue appears to be more pressing in the south end of Tiverton.

The Conservation Commission she heads, she said, is paying attention to these issues. "Everything we do, water's at the top of the list."

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