The Londonderry Utilities Committee met on April 2 to discuss the impact of the new townwide email system for its members. After a slow start, the town of Londonderry has begun pushing all officials to open an official account on the new system.
“Once this system is up and running, there will be no more business conducted on private email accounts,” explained Utilities Chair, Lynn Wiles. “Everything will be through the Town of Londonderry board’s email account.”
Vice Chair, Martha Smith, added that the accounts will be more secure than a private email, with a “more complicated” password system. A few members of the Committee were still in the process of switching over.
The water subcommittee examined what strategy they wanted to utilize moving forward following the approval of Warrant Article 3 for a new water system in the recent March election.
“There’s the task of a town water strategy,” said member, Jeffrey McGraw. “We’re collecting data. We’re going to start thinking about how we’re going to organize it and putting together a ‘data lake.’ There obviously going to be a lot of information to collect.”
He also mentioned engaging in more public outreach through cable access videos and roundtables to keep residents informed on the PFAS situation. The Utilities Committee pledged to keep their Town Council Liaison, Ron Dunn, who was jokingly referred to as the “Water Czar,” in the loop with any new plans. Dunn was recently asked by the Town Council to lead the town’s effort to expand the water system.
“There’s a lot of good activity going, it’s a good team, a lot of diverse skills, and I think we’re making some good progress,” said McGraw.
Much of the information gathered will be sent to engineers with more experience on what the design of an expanded water system could look like. The Committee will talk to Pennichuck Water’s new CEO John Boisvert in the near future on the issue of new water lines and hopes to coordinate with the Planning Board to add their developing water strategy to the Master Plan.
“I think one of the deficiencies in the Master Plan is the lack of a water plan,” said Wiles. “It’s timely that we’re doing this.”
Funding has already been set aside to revise the existing Master Plan.
The sewer and solid waste subcommittee looked into looking at the sewer facilities plan, which has not been updated since 2013. According to the Chair, some elements of the plan were even more out of date.
“The current rate structure is from 2007,” Wile explained. “The rate structure hasn’t changed in 17 years. Right away, that tells you something’s a mess with that.”
No immediate action was taken on a proposal to merge sewerage with the water subcommittee or on a proposal to add recycling to the solid waste subcommittee from the March meeting.
The Utilities Committee is scheduled to meet again on Tuesday, May 7, at 7 p.m. on the first floor of the Moose Hill Council Chambers.