The town needs clean water and has a 2031 deadline. It also has a water fund in the red, $110 million in projected debt, and a rate plan that was supposed to prevent exactly this.

By John Barrella

MIDDLEBOROUGH — Let me start with what isn’t in dispute. The South Wells Water Treatment Plant is not optional. Three well fields in the southern part of town need treatment for iron, manganese and PFAS, and the state has set a 2031 compliance deadline. Nobody who has read the testing data wants to argue with forever chemicals in the drinking water. The plant is going to be built, and it should be.

That is exactly why the way we pay for it matters.

On Monday night, the Select Board is scheduled to vote on signing a purchase and sale agreement for 155 Spruce Street, one of the land deals tied to the $62 million plant. According to the draft agreement in the board’s meeting packet, the town would pay $210,000 for 5.104 acres, carved out of a larger family parcel owned by five members of the Maxim family. That works out to roughly $41,000 an acre. Closing is set for Oct. 14, and the agreement says time is of the essence. Thirty minutes after that vote, the board opens a hearing on the special permit for the plant itself.

Voters authorized the acquisition under Article 26 at the June 1 Annual Town Meeting. Before the board signs, it should explain to residents how the $210,000 price was set and whether it is backed by an independent appraisal.

At $210,000, the land is the small question. The bigger one is the water fund itself.

Interim Town Manager Robert Nunes gave the town its first honest look at that fund on Sept. 21. His presentation reported an unaudited fiscal 2026 deficit of $576,041 in the water enterprise fund. It projected roughly $110 million in additional enterprise debt over the next five to 10 years, and that figure does not include trucks, a tank or construction of a new tank. It said the rate increase that took effect Jan. 1, 2024 “will be reviewed.” It said rates and charges “must cover all expenditures including debt.”

Read those lines together and the conclusion is plain. Water bills are going up, likely by a meaningful amount, and the town has not yet told residents how much.

Here is the part that should concern every ratepayer.

An enterprise fund has one job: take in enough from the people who use the service to pay for the service. Water users pay for water. That is the whole design. When a water fund runs a deficit, it means rates and spending were out of line, and nobody corrected it in time. Under state law, a shortfall the fund can’t absorb gets made up in the following year’s budget, which means it lands on the same taxpayers who are already facing a tight recap.

And this deficit was predicted, almost to the year.

On Dec. 18, 2023, the Select Board received a water and sewer rate study from the consulting firm Raftelis. As reported by the Nemasket at the time, the consultant told the board the town was on track to spend more than $100 million on water capital investment through 2033. In other words, the debt now in Mr. Nunes’ presentation was on the table nearly three years ago.

The study gave the board two options.

According to the Nemasket’s coverage, Scenario 1 front-loaded the increase, raising a typical family’s quarterly bill about 13 percent in the first year. Scenario 2 started lower, about 10.9 percent for that family, and called for 7.5 percent annual increases in fixed charges over five years, with usage rates rising as needed to hit revenue targets.

The board adopted Scenario 2 on a 2-1 vote, the Nemasket reported. Brian Giovanoni and Thomas White voted in favor. Neil Rosenthal voted against, noting that businesses and larger users would bear the brunt of the new tier structure. The board’s chairman at the time, Mark Germain, abstained.

Giovanoni appeared to understand the stakes that night. “Sewage is insolvent. In two years water will be insolvent,” he said, according to the Nemasket. That makes the choice harder to explain. Faced with a warning of insolvency and a study showing $100 million in capital needs ahead, the board chose the option with the smaller first-year increase.

Two years later, the water fund is in the red.

I expect the answer will be that the board didn’t want to put too much strain on ratepayers. It’s a sympathetic argument, and nobody enjoys raising water bills. But it doesn’t hold up.

A smaller increase doesn’t make a cost go away. It moves it down the road, where it grows. The water fund still has to pay its bills. When rates fall short, the gap doesn’t disappear. It turns into a deficit, and that deficit has to be covered.

Covering it can mean the tax levy, and that shifts the burden onto every taxpayer in town, including residents on private wells who don’t get a drop of town water. Sparing ratepayers a couple of percentage points in 2024 can end up charging people who never used the system.

And the ratepayers the board meant to protect aren’t spared either. They now face a catch-up increase to close the deficit, arriving at the same time as the debt for South Wells and the rest of the $110 million. That is the strain the board said it wanted to avoid, only bigger and later. Protecting ratepayers means charging what the service actually costs, steadily, so a household can plan for it. It doesn’t mean holding rates down until the bill comes due all at once.

That leaves residents with questions the town has to answer. Scenario 2 was a five-year plan, not a one-time increase. Were the scheduled increases for 2025 and 2026 carried out? If they were, why didn’t they keep the fund whole? If they weren’t, who decided to skip them, and why? And why is the most recent increase the town points to the one that took effect Jan. 1, 2024?

It is fair to ask whether this is a water problem or a management problem.

The rest of the town’s books suggest the question is worth asking. In March, the town disclosed a $3.3 million shortfall that forced cuts across departments and postponed Town Meeting. The town’s auditors have since told officials that the fiscal 2025 audit is delayed and will identify weaknesses in internal controls, and the town is rolling over short-term borrowing rather than locking in permanent financing. The same finance operation that produced those problems has been managing the water fund. Residents deserve to know whether the water deficit is a one-time miss or part of the same pattern.

I raise this not to slow the plant, but because $110 million of new debt is about to run through that operation. If the accounting behind the water fund isn’t sound, every rate projection built on it will be wrong, and ratepayers will find out the hard way.

So here is what should be disclosed, in plain terms.

First, publish the full 2023 Raftelis rate study, both scenarios, on the town website. Residents should be able to see what Scenario 1 would have raised year by year and where it projected the water fund’s balance would be today, side by side with the plan the board chose. If Scenario 1 would have kept the fund out of the red, ratepayers deserve to know that. If it wouldn’t have, they deserve to know that too.

Second, account for the 2023 rate plan. Tell residents which of the scheduled increases under Scenario 2 took effect, which did not, and who made those calls.

Third, explain the $576,041 deficit. Residents should know when it was first identified, what caused it, and how it will be covered.

Fourth, before Nov. 9, publish a water rate projection covering the next 10 years. It should show South Wells, East Grove Street and the rest of the projected $110 million in debt, and what each will mean for a typical household’s bill.

Fifth, have the water enterprise fund reviewed independently before the town borrows for South Wells. The auditors are already in the building. Ask them to look closely at the water fund’s revenues, expenses and debt schedule, and make the findings public.

Sixth, tell residents the plan for the $1,350,455 sitting in the PFAS settlement fund. That money exists because of the contamination this plant is built to remove. It should be pointed at this problem, and Town Meeting has to vote to spend it, so the plan belongs in the warrant conversation now.

Seventh, lay out every outside dollar the town has applied for or will apply for, from state and federal drinking water programs, so ratepayers can see we are not carrying costs someone else would help cover.

None of this delays the plant. The design is funded, the deadline is five years out, and the town is already building a model: the $33 million East Grove Street plant, now built. What it does is make sure the people who will pay for South Wells, every household on town water, know what they are paying for, and can trust the numbers, before they get the bill.

Clean water is the goal. Clear numbers and sound management are how we get there.

The Select Board meets Monday at 7 p.m. in the Select Board Meeting Room at Town Hall, 10 Nickerson Ave. The permit hearing opens at 7:30 p.m. The meeting packet is posted on the town’s website. Come ask.

Disclosure: The author is an elected member of the Middleborough Finance Committee and serves on the Town Manager Search Committee.

Sources: “Water and sewer costs to increase in Middleboro,” by Brendan Cassidy, the Nemasket, Dec. 19, 2023; Town of Middleborough, draft purchase and sale agreement for 155 Spruce Street, Select Board packet, Sept. 28, 2026; Interim Town Manager Robert Nunes, financial presentation, Sept. 21, 2026.