Finance Committee Seeks to Reduce Town’s Use of Water

By Lizzie Seibert

The Finance Committee wrapped up 2016 discussing new ideas for water conservation across town departments.

Currently, town departments do not have to pay for the water that they use. FinCom member Ben Thomas noted that town departments use half of Bedford’s water and speculated that Bedford would save water (and money) if departments had a budget for it.

Bedford already has water meters in place and can easily measure how much water departments use. The Finance Committee discussed using these meters to understand how much water each department needs and what it costs to provide it.

Committee Chair Stephen Steele speculated that the greatest potential for water conservation is with irrigation for sports fields, and hopes to especially incentivize the use of less water for field maintenance.

The committee aims to meet with the Bedford Selectmen in the upcoming weeks to discuss a concrete conservation plan.