Today, the MWRA Board of Directors, members of the Brutsch family and staff gathered in Ware for the dedication of the William A. Brutsch Water Treatment Facility.

The facility treats drinking water for MWRA's three Chicopee Valley Aqueduct Water System communities: Wilbraham, Chicopee and South Hadley Fire District No. 1. Combined, these communities use an average of about 10 million gallons of water per day. The water is supplied from the Quabbin Reservoir and delivered by gravity through the Chicopee Valley Aqueduct. Along the way, it is stored in the 25 million gallon Nash Hill Covered Storage Tanks in Ludlow.

Originally constructed in 1999, the new state-of-the-art disinfection facilities were added and on-line by October 1, 2014 in compliance with the EPA’s Long-Term 2 Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rule which requires the addition of a second primary disinfection process. The water is also treated with chlorine. Ultraviolet light is essentially a more potent form of the natural disinfection from sunlight. UV enables MWRA to inactivate the most difficult to kill pathogens - which could potentially be in our source water - without the use of additional chemicals.

Nearly the entire Quabbin watershed is forest and wetlands and over 83% of the watershed lands cannot be developed. With this significant investment in treatment, along with well-protected reservoirs and extensive watershed protection efforts, customers can be confident that the water MWRA delivers is not just among the best tasting, but of the highest quality.

This Spring, Quabbin water was voted Best of the Best in a national taste test at the American Waterworks Annual Conference

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