Special Town Meeting Warrant Article # 1 WATER WITHDRAWAL CONTROL ORDINANCE

WATER WITHDRAWAL CONTROL ORDINANCE
-An Open letter to Atkinson- by Carol Grant

The purpose of this article is to prevent the draining and withdrawal of large amounts of Atkinson groundwater by a local private water company for pumping, transport, use and sale out of Atkinson.

It is against Atkinson’s best interests to allow our groundwater table to be negatively impacted by being lowered and drained by massive withdrawals of many millions of gallons every year of our groundwater supplies by a private company for private profit.

Atkinson’s residents have a duty and responsibility to current and future generations to take affirmative steps now to protect and safeguard Atkinson’s threatened precious groundwater supplies for current and future town needs.

Approximately half of Atkinson’s homes are on private wells which are totally dependant on adequate ground water supplies. These wells can be very seriously impacted by the lowering of the groundwater table which serves those wells.

Atkinson’s precious groundwater is held in the public trust as a commonly owned natural resource owned together by Atkinson residents. It is Atkinson’s most valuable and most important natural resource and we all own it together. No one -- company or individual – has a right to sell it out from under us for private profit.

This ordinance will not affect the water service which Atkinson homes or residents are currently receiving from an existing community well or from being on a private company’s water system.

This isn’t a zoning ordinance which applies only to specific zones in town. Instead, it is a town-wide ordinance which applies equally all over town, such as our fire safety, electrical and building codes.

This Ordinance is an exact replica of N.H.’s prototype ordinance which has been adopted and is successfully in place in Barnstead, N.H. It’s an ordinance especially written for N.H. towns.
Barnstead was facing a similar threat of a private water company making massive water withdrawals from Barnstead’s ground water supplies. Barnstead got the help of lawyers from the Community Environmental Defense Fund who have been assisting towns in several states by providing them with models of ordinances tailored to their state’s laws. They make sure that every legal “t” is crossed and every “i” is dotted.

New Hampshire law says that if a town’s laws are stricter than the states’, then the stricter law will apply. What is so scarey is that a state official of N.H. DES (Department of Environmental Services) recently in town for a question/answer session, freely admitted that ALL water withdrawal permits applications submitted by private water companies are ROUTINELY APPROVED as long as the application is properly filled out and the appropriate bureaucratic steps followed. Unless a town has regulations in effect preventing massive water withdrawals, the permits to do so will be granted.

Atkinson is a very environmentally-sensitive town. Atkinson residents care deeply about our environmental quality of life. We have one of the strictest wetlands ordinances in the state to
protect the quality of our ground water from any contamination or pollution. Atkinson voters
have always OVERWHELMINGLY voted against any attempts to tamper with or weaken our
Wetlands Ordinance.

Right now, it is not the quality or purity of our ground water which is threatened. It is the KEEPING of our valuable and precious, needed clean pure water in Atkinson that is threatened. Please
support the passage of the Water Withdrawal Control Ordinance at Deliberative Session on Tue.,July 17
and by your ballot vote on September 12 . We all have a responsibility to Atkinson and her now and future generations to protect Atkinson’s threatened water supplies.

Carol A. Grant