The Senate on Thursday passed a bill sponsored by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairwoman Dawn Euer to allow Jamestown to limit expansion of its water supply to within the boundaries of its public water district.
“Jamestown is an island with limited fresh water sources that feed into the public water system,” said Senator Euer (D-District 13, Newport, Jamestown). “To put it simply, Jamestown does not have the water to serve the potential buildout outside of the boundaries of the public water district. If they are compelled to do so, the best-case scenario would be astronomical costs that would be borne by ratepayers across the entire system. It’s more likely that the system would simply not function at all.”
Legislation (2022-S 2480, 2022-H 7782) passed in 2022 to provide consistent standards to govern the review of extensions of water service statewide may have inadvertently placed Jamestown in the difficult position of being forced to extend service beyond both the boundaries of its existing water district and its supply of fresh water.
While the majority of Jamestown residents reside within the town water district, its boundaries do not cover the entire island. Jamestown’s town water is supplied from a reservoir fed by two ponds, supplemented by a town well that has limited capacity.
This issue is particularly acute in the summer months in Jamestown, when the population swells from tourism at the same time that the rainfall feeding the reservoir often slows.
Senator Euer’s bill, which she introduced at the request of a resolution from the Jamestown Water and Sewer Commission, would remedy this by allowing Jamestown to specifically limit the obligations of its public water system to those who reside within its boundaries.
The bill (2024-S 2414) now heads to the House, where Rep. Alex S. Finkelman (D-Dist. 74, Jamestown, Middletown) has introduced companion legislation (2024-H 7345).
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) assisted a What’sUpNewp journalist with the reporting included in this story.
