Submitted by the Bedford Department of Public Works
On March 10th, the Town of Bedford will be switching its source of drinking water from the MWRA system to the Town of Burlington supply. This will alter the type of chlorine used for disinfection which may impose a slight taste and odor change in your water. There may also be a minor reduction in water pressure.
By using the Burlington water supply for approximately 4-5weeks, we expect to improve the disinfection residuals to the outer areas of our distribution system. This should help with the water quality issues we experienced last summer due to low chlorine levels.
In addition, water improvement projects scheduled for this year are to clean and line the water mains in Shawsheen Road and Page Road and to implement a gate valve operational program to ensure full potential of our distribution system.
Please contact the Bedford Water Division at (781) 275-7605 if you have any questions or need additional information. Thank you for your patience.
I would like to know just how widespread this problem is in the town. Seems to me that some areas are impacted much more than others. And, yes, will the cost be impacted by the change?
Just curious, doe’s MWRA water for this area come from The Clinton Reservoir ?
In response to one of the posted comments by “oceancity”: most of the towns water in the high demand summer months comes from the Town of Lexington’s distribution system. This was an agreement negotiated with Lexington when the Town received approval to join the MWRA system around 20 years or so ago. It is MWRA water. The remaining water comes from the Towns Shawsheen Road wellfield. Based on what I have read in the water reports sent to all Bedford households and discussions I have had with Town officials the problems (high coliform bacteria counts in some samples) are due to old distribution pipelines that have to be relined (this is an ongoing project) along with higher water temperatures during the summer months. Another problem has been a reduction in chlorine levels at the far end of the system which DPW is trying to correct.
I don’t think the town has a clue as to why our water is substandard. Lexington last year , now Burlington this year and this costs how much?