MONTAGUE — The Clean Water Facility was presented with a $105,883 bill for using more than 20 million gallons of water during its chlorination process for September and October, an unexpected figure that Superintendent Chelsey Little feels is likely the result of a faulty meter.

During a Selectboard meeting this week, Little explained that the facility at 34 Greenfield Road recently upgraded a water meter that feeds into the operations building, and the Turners Falls Water Department, to whom the bill would be paid, discovered the millions of gallons used during an October meter check. The meter measures the flow of water as chlorine is added.

“It’s just astronomical, and it was a surprise to the [Turners Falls] Water Department, too,” Little told the board.

By comparison, the water bill that came through during the six-month chlorination period that was billed from April 2023 to October 2023, prior to this year’s meter replacement, amounted to just under $11,900 for 3.17 million gallons of water. This means the new meter is reading several times that amount for the same process in a two-month period.

The meter was also checked a few days prior to Monday’s Selectboard meeting, and Little said the meter was reading water usage of 50 million gallons up to that point in November, which is expected to result in a second, even larger bill. Selectboard Vice Chair Matt Lord stated that 70 million gallons — the total amount read by the meter for September, October and November so far — of water is the entire amount of water used in the California fracking industry for 2014, per a Google search.

“I don’t think we are using more than what the old meter was saying,” Little said.

Little explained she calculated the amount of water flowing per day under this likely erroneous reading and it would equate to 100,000 gallons. She said there is another meter that monitors the effluent, or water put back into the river, and if there was a large amount of water flowing, that meter would read it. Little noted the effluent meter did not register a large spike before it was closed in October.

Both Lord and Selectboard Chair Rich Kuklewicz agreed that there is something awry, with Lord stating these numbers seem “off the scale.” The two floated ideas for how the measurements could be compared, such as getting data on the number of gallons of water being pumped to the entirety of Montague daily.

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From here, Town Administrator Walter Ramsey said the Selectboard will meet with Little and Turners Falls Water Department Superintendent Jeffrey Hildreth to complete some further calculations and discuss the possibility of a secondary meter, which will be reassessed during a later Selectboard meeting. For now, the Clean Water Facility will hold off on paying the $105,883 bill for September and October. If it were deemed to be an accurate bill, Ramsey said the cost would have “a budget impact, for sure” on the fiscal year.

Erin-Leigh Hoffman can be reached
at ehoffman@recorder.com or 413-930-4231.

An earlier version of this article had a typo in the bill amount presented to the Montague Clean Water Facility. The correct number is $105,883.