Water Commissioner

Member of Billerica's elected Board of Water Commissioners, which built and ran the town water works from 1897 until the Select Board took over its powers as a Board of Public Works in 1933.

At the March 1896 town meeting, on motion of E. L. McMahon, the town voted 100 to 94 to appropriate $700 for a committee of three to investigate a water supply, and chose Frederic S. Clark, J. Nelson Parker and Charles H. Kohlrausch, Jr.; their report was heard at the 1897 annual meeting. The same three men became the first Water Commissioners. The works were paid for with $90,000 of water bonds and a sinking fund begun in June 1898, and a 1919 insurance survey printed in the town report dates the installation to 1898 (the Historical Commission in 1993 dated the first pumping station to 1897). Water came from a field of about 80 driven wells beside the brick pumping station on Boston Road and was pumped to a standpipe. The commissioners issued their first annual report for the year ending February 1899 and also acted as the Water Bond Sinking Fund Commissioners.

The board had three members, one elected each year for three years, and it appointed a superintendent (see Water Superintendent). Water mains were extended street by street by town meeting vote; in 1917 the board had the engineers Metcalf and Eddy inspect the standpipe, and from 1919 each commissioner was paid $100 a year.

Chapter 221 of the Special Acts of 1930 allowed the selectmen to act as a Board of Public Works holding the powers of the water commissioners, highway surveyor, tree warden and park commissioners. The town accepted it in 1932, and when the new five-member board of selectmen organized as the Board of Public Works in 1933 the elected water board ended; Leroy O. Balch, Frank L. Day and John F. Roome were the last commissioners. Bills to abolish the Department of Public Works and restore elected water commissioners appeared in 1933-1935, and an article to the same effect was dismissed at the 1937 town meeting. The water department has since been run under the Board of Public Works and later the Director of Public Works.

Sources: Billerica annual town reports 1897-1937 (officer lists, election returns, water commissioners' reports, 1919 insurance survey, text of Chapter 221). Years are service years. The report for 1898 is missing, so the 1897 start is inferred from the 1896-1897 votes, the staggered expirations (1899, 1900, 1901) of the first three terms, and the 1897 pumping station date; the 1912 and 1913 reports are also missing, and Isaac Hopkinson's 1913 start is inferred from the terms.