Andrew Mikula
In June 2024, the Massachusetts House of Representatives passed a $6.5 billion housing bond bill that, among other items, earmarked $1 billion in spending to expand the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority service area to some far-flung Boston suburbs.
The MWRA already provides sewer and water services to dozens of communities in Eastern and Central Massachusetts, and the legislature has for years expressed interest in expanding its service area to cover growing suburban areas. In 2021, they authorized a series of three service expansion feasibility studies, each covering a different subregion of Greater Boston: the North Shore, South Shore and MetroWest.
While the MWRA expansion funding didn’t make the final version of the bond bill sent to Gov. Maura Healey on Aug. 1, securing such funding will likely continue to be a priority for House Speaker Ron Mariano.
Regardless of whether the MWRA service area should be expanded in general, doing so is neither a cost-effective nor time-efficient way of facilitating housing production. The full service scenarios envisioned in each of the three MWRA expansion studies come with a potential price tag of “well over $1 billion” each, and the timeline for designing, constructing and opening the new water and sewer lines ranges as high as 30 years.
The proposal’s enormous upfront capital requirements and decades-long construction period make it untenable as a scalable and timely solution to the state’s housing crisis.
Lawmakers are right to target housing production in areas with development-ready sites, but it’s unnecessary to use debt financing to create additional development sites at such a scale. Instead, Beacon Hill should use policy – not spending – to overcome barriers to development in areas already served by the MWRA.
Narrow, Targeted Mandate Possible
There’s a powerful precedent for tying land use regulations to local sewer and water infrastructure in Vermont. In 2023, the Green Mountain State began requiring municipalities to allow up to four housing units to be built at a time on properties where public sewer and water service is available. If this is a tenable policy in the least-urbanized state in the country, then surely it is appropriate in transit- and amenity-rich suburbs like Newton and Medford.
Further, the Massachusetts legislature could target such a requirement to communities with representation on the MWRA advisory board, a much narrower mandate than Vermont’s sweeping state-wide preemption of local rules. This narrow targeting would reduce the likelihood that municipalities with locally sourced water continue to endure public health and environmental challenges due to increasing demand.
By comparison, as of June 2024, the MWRA water system operates at about 76 percent of its “safe yield” maximum capacity, a figure that has remained virtually unchanged since 2010 in the midst of a regional building boom.
The Deer Island Wastewater Treatment Plant, which processes sewage for 43 cities and towns in the MWRA service area, is even further from being overburdened. Its June 2024 peak flow rate was just 63 percent of its maximum capacity.
Infill Costs the Public Less
It’s true that individual development projects may require infrastructure with more capacity than is available in existing pipes. But the upfront costs associated with adding this capacity are mostly borne by developers, not state taxpayers, and the costs of servicing infill development (e.g., replacing existing pipes) are generally lower than those of greenfield development (e.g., securing new easements, digging new trenches and installing new pipes).
In addition to infrastructure cost savings, the benefits of concentrating new housing in existing neighborhoods include lower emissions, better access to jobs and less traffic than the alternatives.
Facilitating housing development by making more efficient use of existing infrastructure is more fiscally responsible, environmentally friendly and immediately actionable than merely expanding the infrastructure.
By legalizing accessory dwelling units and reforming split-lot zoning rules statewide, the legislature has already taken a broad-based approach to incrementally adding housing in existing neighborhoods. A logical next step is to create less restrictive development rules in municipalities already included in the MWRA service area.
Andrew Mikula is a senior housing fellow at the Pioneer Institute and the author of “Supply Stagnation: The Root Cause of Greater Boston’s Housing Crisis and How to Fix It.”
