A Brand-New West Newbury Minute History is Available!
Minute Histories from the Historical Commission
How Newburyport came to take the Artichoke River’s waters and roughly 200 acres of land in West Newbury is a long and tangled tale with roots in 19th century industrialization and urbanization. After a “winter cholera”/typhoid outbreak in the winter of 1892-93, suspicions focused on the water supply, at that time furnished by the private Newburyport Water Company. In April of 1893, the state legislature conducted several days of hearings on this topic, in which it was learned that in addition to local wells, the Water Company was drawing on the polluted Merrimack River. With high-powered advisors and lobbyists, Newburyport urged consideration of water sources in Georgetown and West Newbury. Both towns protested, but in June of that year Newburyport was granted statutory authority to take water and land in West Newbury for its water system. Upon the first taking in 1908, Newburyport downplayed adverse impacts to West Newbury, saying that it would take only a negligible amount of water. By 1914, thanks largely to Newburyport’s admittedly wasteful water use, the Artichoke was being pumped dry and a second dam was in the works at Plummer Springs.
Because Newburyport refused to sell West Newbury water, the Town purchased water from Groveland between 1936, when the Town’s water system began, until 1979, when trichlorethylene pollution closed Groveland’s wells. In that crisis, West Newbury made an emergency interconnection with Newburyport, and for the first time was able to use waters from the Artichoke. The Town hoped that with construction of the 150-acre Indian Hill reservoir entirely in West Newbury, Newburyport would make a commitment to provide the Town some of this water. That has not occurred to this day, and West Newbury is still in search of its own reliable water supply.
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