The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority wants to take 10% more water from the Quabbin Reservoir, setting up a new fight over who gets to use one of the state’s most important resources.
The MWRA is seeking state approval to withdraw an additional 20 million gallons of water per day from the Quabbin and Wachusett system, arguing that its reservoirs can safely handle the increase without new infrastructure or changes to operating rules.
The additional water is intended to support “multiple communities seeking admission to the MWRA system,” primarily in eastern Massachusetts, where local water supplies face constraints including PFAS contamination and development pressures. But the proposal comes as the Quabbin sits at about 78.5% capacity, down from June levels, and western Massachusetts lawmakers are questioning whether the region should be asked to steward more water for communities elsewhere without knowing exactly who will receive it or how much they need.
The dispute is coming to a public hearing on Wednesday when the Massachusetts Water Resources Commission is scheduled to hear testimony in Belchertown on the MWRA request to increase withdrawals from the Quabbin and related donor basins.
For communities around the reservoir, the request adds onto a history of costs of the eastward-flowing water. The Quabbin was created by flooding four communities in the Swift River Valley, and western Massachusetts towns now help protect the source of drinking water for 2.7 million people while generally not having access to that water for their own municipal systems.
The four-member Quabbin legislative delegation — Reps. Aaron Saunders and Susannah Whipps and Sens. Jo Comerford and Jake Oliveira — is asking the commission to reject the MWRA application as filed.
“Quabbin water is one of our most precious public resources, and the Commonwealth has a duty to both protect the Reservoir with care and foresight as well as to consider the water needs of all 351 municipalities,” Comerford said.
In a Sept. 15 letter, the lawmakers argue that the MWRA has not identified the communities that would receive the additional water, how much each would need or the demonstrated demand behind the 20-million-gallon figure.
They contend that the state should evaluate an actual transfer to a defined receiving community, rather than approve capacity that could later be assigned to communities that have not yet completed their own reviews.
The letter argues that the Interbasin Transfer Act, which is a state law, “does not authorize the creation of a freestanding bank of transferable capacity that can be approved now and matched with proposed transfers later.”
The MWRA, by contrast, is treating the donor-basin question as systemwide, and an agency spokesperson pointed out that individual communities still have to undergo their own environmental, regulatory and MWRA admission processes to be hooked up to the system.
The MWRA currently supplies an annual average of about 200 million gallons of water a day. According to its February 2026 donor-basin analysis, revised in July, the Quabbin-Wachusett-Ware system has a designated safe yield of 300 million gallons per day, a figure that has been maintained through studies dating back more than a century.
The proposed 20 MGD increase would therefore amount to about 10% above today’s average withdrawals while still leaving the system 80 MGD below its current safe-yield estimate.
The authority’s modeling concluded the additional 20 MGD would produce minimal impacts on reservoir elevations and storage, downstream flows and wetlands.
The Quabbin is a multiyear storage reservoir, meaning the authority does not have to balance its water supply on the same short-term timetable as a smaller municipal reservoir.
The MWRA says aggressive conservation programs started in the 1980s — particularly leak detection and repair — produced a 20% reduction in system demand during just the first five years of those efforts. Current withdrawal rates, it says, are at levels last seen in the 1950s even as the number of people using the system has grown.
In the authority’s case for expansion, it says conservation has created capacity that can now potentially be used to serve communities that lack reliable or sufficiently clean local supplies.
The MWRA analysis projects that the system can reasonably supply demand of up to 260 MGD by 2050. Even with the additional 20 MGD for potential new communities and as much as 40 MGD of growth within the existing service area, the system could meet its performance measures even during drought, it says.
“This request comes during a period of drought and without consideration for the clean water future of western Massachusetts,” Comerford said. “Attempting to sidestep the Interbasin Transfer Act is deeply misguided — we cannot take our water supply for granted. The stakes are simply too high to weaken the very safeguards designed to protect it.”
The authority’s analysis anticipates a wetter Northeastern climate over coming decades and says that could eventually increase the system’s safe yield, potentially from roughly 300 MGD to 324 MGD.
That does not mean climate change makes the water-supply question simple.
The region is expected to rely less on predictable snowmelt and more on rainfall as the climate changes, according to the MWRA analysis. And drought remains a defining risk.
During the most severe drought in the state’s recorded history, from 1961 to 1969, 37 communities declared water emergencies and Quabbin fell to about 45% capacity in 1967.
The current reservoir level is nowhere near that historic low. But for communities that live alongside the reservoir, the ongoing drought is a reminder that long-term averages and safe-yield calculations do not eliminate year-to-year uncertainty.
The MWRA says its multiyear storage is precisely what gives the system resilience through those swings. Western Massachusetts lawmakers argue that uncertainty is one reason the state should not approve additional withdrawals before knowing exactly where the water will go.
There is no shortage of potential customers.
Sherborn’s North Sherborn Water and Sewer District has already advanced through environmental review for a project serving a town-center development, with estimated demand of about 80,000 gallons per day. The district is now moving through the state’s interbasin-transfer process.
Weymouth and Wayland are in Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act Office (MEPA) review. Weymouth’s proposed withdrawal has been reduced from an earlier peak-day request of 8.84 MGD to 5.5 MGD, the largest pending request, while Wayland is seeking up to 3.5 MGD. Other communities in the pipeline or studying connections include Walpole, Natick, Dover, Hopkinton, Westborough, Billerica, Avon, Lincoln and Wellesley.
Each prospective community faces multiple hurdles, including state environmental review, the Interbasin Transfer Act process and votes by the MWRA Advisory Board and Board of Directors, as well as local approvals.
For eastern Massachusetts, reliable water can be a prerequisite for housing and economic development. Local wells and surface supplies can face contamination, limited capacity or regulatory constraints.
Weymouth’s effort to join the MWRA system has been tied for years to redevelopment of the former South Weymouth Naval Air Station, now SouthField. House Speaker Ron Mariano, who represents Weymouth, made expanding MWRA service to the South Shore a priority and in 2024 pushed a roughly $1 billion House proposal intended to help finance expansion.
The bond proposal ultimately did not survive negotiations with the Senate, but Weymouth’s more limited separate application continued through the state’s environmental review process.
Mariano has continued to argue that water is necessary to unlock housing at SouthField, including a potential 6,000 homes cited in his earlier advocacy.
Western Massachusetts lawmakers are not disputing that eastern communities have water needs. Their argument is that those needs under the law should be demonstrated community by community, with alternatives and consequences examined before the state approves the additional donor-basin capacity.
Dozens of communities have started talks to be connected to the water system, a huge surge since the Lynnfield Center Water District last year became the first new community admitted since 2020.
The MWRA normally charges new communities an entrance fee reflecting their share of the existing regional system. However, in 2022, the authority approved a waiver for qualifying new communities whose local supplies have water-quality problems, are in stressed basins, or significantly constrain economic development.
The waiver is available for a total of up to 20 MGD and expires Dec. 31, 2027, or when the 20 MGD is used up, whichever comes first. This does not mean towns cannot join after 2027; it means the fee waiver would no longer be available under the current policy.
The result is a potential convergence of forces: eastern Massachusetts communities facing water-quality, supply and development pressures; an MWRA system that says conservation and storage have left it with room to grow; a financial incentive expiring in 15 months; and western Massachusetts communities asking whether the region that hosts the state’s water supply should have a greater say in — and greater benefit from — its expansion.
The public hearing is scheduled for 11 a.m. Sept. 30 at Belchertown Town Hall, with remote participation available. Written comments are due by 5 p.m. Oct. 7.
Sam Drysdale is a reporter for State House News Service and State Affairs Pro Massachusetts. Reach her at [email protected].
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