Portsmouth moves to protect its water supply: $1.44M Bellamy Reservoir easement in works
PORTSMOUTH — The City Council voted unanimously this week to authorize City Manager Karen Conard to negotiate a purchase-and-sale agreement for a conservation easement on a 45-acre property near the Bellamy Reservoir, the city's primary source of water.
If the city is able to purchase the conservation easement for about $1.44 million as expected, it would prevent any more development from happening on the site, according to Al Pratt, water resources manager for the city. There are now two houses near the site.
That’s important, Pratt told the council, because “the Bellamy Reservoir is the primary water supply for the city of Portsmouth.”
“On average it’s over 60% of the water that we drink here comes from the Bellamy Reservoir,” Pratt said.
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The conservation easement is especially important, because “the more development that happens in a watershed — the more roads, the more buildings, the more houses, the more septic systems that happen in a watershed — the higher the degradation of the surface water within that watershed,” he said.
The threats to water quality come generally from chemicals and nutrients, and the more development “you have the more it’s likely to have these types of threats,” he said.
The 45 acres they’re seeking to purchase the easement on could have been the site of seven new homes if the city had not moved to protect the property, Pratt said.
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Brian Goetz, the city's deputy public works director, called the 45 acres “right there adjacent to our prime drinking water supply, a crucial area to conserve.”
“That’s our goal to protect areas like that from development and Al has been so successful,” Goetz said Wednesday. “Preserving the land in any watershed is prime because the activities that happen on private property can greatly impact water quality all the way down to Great Bay.”
That’s because, Goetz said, septic systems are often “the biggest contributor of nitrogen to Great Bay.”
Pratt noted that the 45-acre site is just 2,000 feet from the spillway at the Bellamy Reservoir dam.
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The spillway, he explained, “is the intake structure for the water supply so the water goes right from that point to our water treatment facility in Madbury.”
The city previously acquired conservation easements near the reservoir totaling 178 acres, Pratt said, including a 71-acre parcel to the southwest of the reservoir and a 107- acre parcel to the southeast.
They were purchased in 2018 and 2020, he said.
The city is proposing to purchase the 45-acre conservation easement by using monies initially from its Water Enterprise Fund, Pratt said. It would then seek up to 50% in reimbursement of the purchase price through the N.H. Drinking Water Groundwater Trust Fund.
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They also plan to apply for as much as a $25,000 grant from the N.H.DES Local Source Water Protection fund, Pratt said.
“The timing of this easement is really important, the person who owns the property right now is very much in favor of putting an easement on the property,” he said.
Mayor Deaglan McEachern recalled crossing over the Bellamy Reservoir on Route 9 while riding with his father, the late Paul McEachern.
His father would point out “every single time we went there … that’s where Portsmouth got its water supply,” McEachern said during Monday’s City Council meeting.
He added he was “very much in favor of being able to protect that water supply for my kids and their kids one day.”
This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Portsmouth moves to protect its water supply at Bellamy Reservoir
