Robert Marquis started working for the Swansea, Mass., water district in 1976. “We’ve been through a few things,” he says.
Over the last four decades, Marquis has watched the town grow. Located in southeastern Massachusetts, near Providence, R.I., the town’s population increased by 27.5 and 22.3 percent respectively in the 1970s and 1980s.
“The community just outgrew the water system,” he says. “Since the 1970s, we’ve been addressing water shortages. In 1999, one of our storage tanks was drawing down to a level where it could no longer be in service.”
Between 1995 and 2005, Marquis says, the town suffered through three declared water emergencies. “We’d pump (our groundwater sources) dry and have mandatory restrictions, and we’d have to police it because of supply conditions,” he says.
“(The plant) has relieved our water-supply-related issues, and it was done at a reasonable cost in comparison to other facilities.” — Robert Marquis, water district manager in Swasea, Mass.
That’s when Marquis started looking at what it would take to build a desalination plant, a facility that could turn seawater — or, in this case, brackish river water — into drinking water. That was in the mid-2000s. The plant opened in 2010 but didn’t start treating salt water until 2013. Since then, it’s been a success, Marquis says.
“It has been extremely effective,” he says. “(The plant) has relieved our water-supply-related issues, and it was done at a reasonable cost in comparison to other facilities.”
The Seacoast may someday follow in Swansea’s footsteps. Officials in Portsmouth and Seabrook are looking at desalination plants as a way to meet their communities’ — and the region’s — water needs. This summer’s hot, dry weather has brought those needs into focus, as have ongoing efforts to clean up and replace the Haven Well at Pease International Tradeport, which is part of Portsmouth’s water system.
Though New Hampshire isn’t experiencing a drought, conditions are “abnormally dry” this month, according to the state Department of Environmental Services. NASA announced earlier this month that July was the hottest month on record (the agency’s records date back to the late 1800s). Many communities, including Epping, Newmarket, Durham, and Barrington, have instituted either voluntary or mandatory restrictions on water usage. In Portsmouth, no restrictions are in place, though the city is encouraging residents to be conservative with their water usage.
Supply and demand
Portsmouth’s water supply is in good shape, according to Brian Goetz, deputy director of public works. The city’s water system is one of the oldest in the state — the state legislature established the Portsmouth Aqueduct Company in 1797. Now, the system includes more than 190 miles of pipe transporting millions of gallons of water each day.
On a hot, dry summer day, the city’s water system will pump out around 6 million gallons of water. In the winter, that goes down to 3.5 to 4 million gallons, Goetz says.
“If Pease did not have the ability to get water from Portsmouth, it would be much worse.” — Brian Goetz, deputy director
of public works in Portsmouth
The city’s water system is regional — it pumps water to Newington, New Castle, and parts of Rye, Greenland, and Pease Tradeport. Most of the water comes from a reservoir in Madbury, with the rest coming from wells in Portsmouth, Greenland, and Pease. Portsmouth’s water supply is a mix of surface and groundwater sources.
“We’re fortunate … that we have an integrated system,” Goetz says. “Some systems are all groundwater or are all surface water … you don’t have other sources to turn to if you’re impacted.”
Having other sources is key. The Haven Well at Pease was shut down in the spring of 2014 after tests found perflourochemicals (PFCs) in the well at levels 12.5 times higher than the levels allowed by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. The PFCs likely originated from firefighting foam that was used when Pease was operating as an Air Force base. After the well was taken offline, Portsmouth established a community advisory board to help address the situation, and the city is working with the state to provide blood tests for people who may have consumed water from the wells. PFCs have been found at two other wells at Pease, though the levels are currently within EPA limits. In July, the EPA ordered the Air Force to begin cleanup efforts on the well.
“Having (the Haven Well) offline impacts us on the supply side,” Goetz says. On a hot summer day, the Haven well could provide about 10 percent of the city’s water needs, and, according to Goetz, it was supplying about half of the tradeport’s water needs. The city connected its water system with the tradeport’s in the 1990s.
“If Pease did not have the ability to get water from Portsmouth, it would be much worse,” Goetz says.
Back-up plans
Portsmouth assistant mayor Jim Splaine was on the redevelopment committee that helped Pease transition from an Air Force base to a tradeport in the early 1990s. The former base has been designated as a Superfund site.
“We found out about a lot of the pollution,” Splaine says. “But this has only begun to hit the surface … if we lose the wells, we’re really going to be hurting for water availability in Portsmouth.”
“Desalination is an answer to the water needs worldwide of about a third of the population.” — Jim Splaine,
Portsmouth city councilor
Concerns about the wells, along with worries about the effects of climate change, have prompted Splaine to look at alternatives to the usual surface and groundwater supplies. Splaine says he and Seabrook town manager William Manzi are visiting Swansea’s desalination plant on Aug. 25. Manzi was not available for comment at press time; however, at an Aug. 17 meeting, Seabrook’s board of selectmen instructed him to begin looking at desalination as an option for the town.
“Desalination is an answer to the water needs worldwide of about a third of the population,” Splaine says. “It may be a long-range answer not only in other parts of the country, but also on the Seacoast.”
Splaine hopes a desalination plant will help the Seacoast start looking at water availability as a region, rather than town by town. He’s trying to put together a meeting this fall of officials from towns from “Newburyport (Mass.) to Ogunquit (Maine)” and everywhere in between to look at how desalination might benefit the region. According to Splaine, communities in California have already turned to desalination plants to help mitigate the effects of drought conditions there. And, while the Seacoast isn’t in danger of a drought, Splaine says, the region should be proactive about its water.
“If we’re going to continue the population and economic growth of the Seacoast, we’ve got to find answers,” he says.
A regional desalination plant is still strictly in the idea phase, and building it would be complicated. In Swansea, water district manager Robert Marquis said getting the plant online was “extremely challenging.” Local, state, and federal permits were hard to come by, and there was public opposition to the plan.
“People just couldn’t get over the concept that … (desalination) only belongs in Saudi Arabia. So, because it hadn’t been utilized or developed for cold-water purposes, it met some resistance,” he says.
Desalination works like this: At low tide, an intake system draws in water from a river or the sea into a holding tank. A series of strainers remove particulate matter from the water. It’s then pumped into a reverse osmosis system that removes the salt. The leftover salt water is pumped back out into the river or ocean at high tide. Desalination is temperature sensitive, according to