Some of us at Walden have been learning about water management in United States and internationally after @Katie recommended the documentary BlueGold, which also has an action plan with resources for how to learn more about how water is managed in your local region. Would love to hear from other people in our community as we start to dig into who owns, manages, and distributes water in our local regions!
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I’ve been looking at places in Plymouth and have been learning about well water. I didn’t realize so many households on the coast were not on city lines (septic being a whole other topic)!
Curious if others have had positive experiences with well water setups.
I have only interacted with well water as a guest, but my sense is for the day to day, the differences are not super noticeable. I would also be interested to see whether there are ways to measure your water table, or more proactive monitoring of water quality… semi-related to this: with our first warm weekend I’ve officially hit navy shower season! Great way to significantly cut down on your water usage by turning off the water when you’re not actively rinsing.
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I grew up with well water and it was the best tasting water! Also, there are occasionally water bans for watering lawns, etc. but if you are on a well you can still use your own water source. The downside is that sometimes the water pressure in your house can be on the weaker side, or you might have to treat your water (like we did) with a water softening system.
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Good to know! I might chat you up about this at some point 
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We’re on the MWRA system here. Great quality water, coming all the way from the Quabbin reservoir. Wastewater is discharged through the Deer Island treatment plant into the harbor.
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Hey there, thanks for posting! I was a little surprised to see that water for the Boston area comes from so far away, but sure enough it does! I found this article published by the North American Lake Management Society which has a nice graphic illustrating the various reservoirs and paths that water takes to get into Boston. The article mostly focuses on managing sources of contamination, but does have a couple lines about how the water budget is managed.
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It’s a remarkable system. The designers got the population projections for the city quite wrong. The population of Boston peaked in 1950 and declined almost 40% in the subsequent decades. I believe this is why they invited all the MWRA member communities to join the system.
Thanks for passing the article! Fun weekend reading.
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