Water !! An alert Citizen

Resident Steps Forward When Selectmen Ignore Their Responsibilities

This blog wishes to commend and thank Atkinson resident John Wolter for stepping up to the plate when, once again, our selectmen dropped the ball and failed in their responsibilities to the residents of Atkinson.

The townspeople of Atkinson are facing a very serious and critical issue, with the potential for great harm to the residents of Atkinson: the pumping of large quantities of our Atkinson water out of town for sale and use out of town. The Hampstead Area Water Company, based in Atkinson, filed an application with the State of NH DES (Dept. of Environmental Services) for a permit to put in more wells in Atkinson, in addition to the existing wells owned and operated by the company in Atkinson.

The Board of Selectmen were advised of this application so that affected residents in town could be advised so that they would have the opportunity to imput on this application which directly affects them. Over 1/3 of the homes in town have private wells which can be seriously impacted by a lowering of the water table because of large-scale withdrawals of our Atkinson water for pumping out of town. Instead of advising the townspeople about this, the Selectmen have withheld from the people the information about this threat to Atkinson’s future groundwater supplies. They have also failed to call for a Public Hearing on the application for resident imput, which is their responsibility when such an impacting application is filed.

Step forward, resident John Wolter, who lives in the Wright Farm Condominium, and is current President of the Wright Farm Condominium Association. Wright Farm has its own private well and water system co-owned by the Wright Farm residents. Because Mr. Wolter is Condo President, he routinely received from the State an informational notification and copy of the Lewis re: Lewis’ new well applications.

Because the selectmen were shirking their responsibility to notify and alert the townspeople or to call for a public hearing, John Wolter, to his great credit, took the initiative. He engaged in intense information-gathering. He contacted DES officials for more information. He studied town maps of water lines and location of Lewis water wells. He singlehandedly arranged for DES officials to come to Atkinson this past Wednesday night to provide information to Atkinson residents about the permitting procedure and to answer questions. He arranged for the meeting to be held at the Community Center. He personally publicized the meeting with two notices in the Carriage Town News. He personally contacted the Eagle Tribune for publicity and for coverage of the meeting. He talked up the meeting with as many residents as possible. He got the meeting publicized on the Community Calendar on Cable TV and also arranged for Cable TV coverage of the meeting, with re-runs to also be broadcast. John also presided over the Wednesday night informational meeting which was to a packed room of concerned residents.

Finally, John is looking into other future avenues which can be pursued to protect Atkinson’s threatened precious water supplies for current and future town needs. John is looking into how to prevent our valuable Atkinson groundwater from being subjected to future massive water withdrawals and pumping out of town for sale out of town for private profit.

John Wolter represents the best of citizenship – of people power. He saw a critical situation developing for Atkinson which was being ignored by our do-nothing selectmen. John, as a concerned town resident, stepped up and showed citizen initiative to protect FOR ATKINSON WHAT BELONGS TO ATKINSON: our valuable ground water supplies.

This blog salutes this very caring activist town citizen. We offer John Wolter our thanks and our praise, and urge town residents to give John whatever help and support he needs in whatever future initiative he uses to protect our Atkinson water for current and future generations in Atkinson.