Millville officials, district outline bottled‑water plan, testing and path to return students to Millville Elementary

Jennifer Gil, chair of the Millville Board of Selectmen, urged clearer guidance from state officials and described three near‑term steps to move students back into Millville Elementary: continued bottled water at school, accelerated capacity testing of the system, and an updated corrective action plan.

At the Jan. 11 Blackstone‑Millville Regional School Committee meeting, Gil said the board will “always provide bottled water if Mass D tells us to do that” and said the towns agreed to supply bottled water for the first two months of school as a good‑faith measure. She and district staff outlined numeric triggers for continued bottled‑water distribution: monthly haloacetic‑acid results must remain at or below 60 parts per billion and trihalomethanes must remain at or below 80 parts per billion for the months under review. If either disinfection‑byproduct exceedance occurs in September or October, the committee agreed to continue bottled water for the next month on a month‑by‑month basis.

The conversation centered on three priorities the committee had identified after a Jan. 4 workshop: consistent, positive clean‑water test results under simulated capacity use; stabilization of water operations and management; and an updated corrective action plan that is clear and publicly posted. Gil said Dr. Gullick has designed a process to simulate higher building water demand — a plan intended to show how the system responds when the school is used at near‑capacity — and that the district’s operator will work with school staff to run that protocol.

Committee members pressed for a precise standard for when the bottled‑water directive would be lifted. Gil said Mass D previously told the district that “one quarter is not right enough,” but the committee does not yet have a firm number of consecutive quarters or months required to remove the bottled‑water requirement. The committee agreed to invite the state official referenced in prior meetings (referred to repeatedly in the transcript as “Mary Jude” and as the director at “the D”) to the school committee’s Feb. 8 meeting and to request written clarification on whether the department’s earlier public wording — described by some members as indicating the water was “unsafe to drink and cook with” — had been retracted or clarified.

Superintendent Jason DeFalco and Millville representatives said they favor a cautious, cooperative approach. DeFalco said the district wants students back in Millville Elementary but emphasized the need for a documented, evidence‑based path forward: a testing regimen that mimics school occupancy and a corrective action plan with clear state acknowledgement or approval.

Officials also discussed funding and long‑term solutions. A regional grant application under consideration was estimated roughly at $2.5 million for needed infrastructure (pump, piping, filters), though committee members said the exact award amounts and distribution would be determined by the grant process and could be apportioned to each town separately. The board of selectmen indicated that any extension of deadlines tied to the regional agreement could require town‑meeting action and legal review.

The committee item closed with a set of concrete next steps: invite the state drinking‑water official to the Feb. 8 meeting, request written clarification on the department’s prior statements and the parameters for lifting the bottled‑water directive, ask Dr. Gullick to provide the capacity‑use protocol in writing for the district and operators to begin trial runs, and post an updated corrective action plan on the district website.

The committee said it would continue to provide five‑gallon bottled water at schools while federal or state guidance requires it and would revisit the decision as additional test results and written state guidance become available.