Closed building used 1.6 million gallons

By Jonathan Cook
Turley Publications Reporter

STURBRIDGE - Publick House General Manager Michael Glick brought a mystery to the Board of Selectmen this week. Call it the mystery of the missing million gallons.
The Orchard Restaurant, located in the back parking lot of the Publick House has been closed since summer 2004. “Since that time it’s been used only as a function room and only for that sporadically,” Glick said.
For 20 quarters since 2004, the building did not use enough water to owe any money. “We’ve been under the 7,000 gallon threshold for a minimum charge,” he said, “but then this last quarter we received a bill indicating that we’ve used 1.6 million gallons of water in that time, at a time when the building has not been used at all for any purpose. The whole year of 2009 the building had never been used.”
The Publick House has already looked into the question with the help of Public Works, yet no answer has been found.
“For us it’s a mystery as to how I can go from having an average of $50 to $60 water bills to having a $16,700 water bill,” Glick said.
He added that a pump station for the Publick House records the hours that the pumps run, but that didn’t show an increase. In fact, Glick said the pumps ran less in the third quarter of 2009 than in the third quarter of 2008.
Glick said he was told by Public Works that 1.6 million gallons is more than the town’s largest tank holds.
Department of Public Works Director Greg Morse was on hand with results from testing that was done on the aging Orchard meter. However, the results show the meter was actually running slow.
“We’re trying to figure out where it went,” Glick said, but there is no sign of a leak, either.
Glick points to the Route 131 water work that was going on at the same time as well as the old school renovations as something to consider, although he doesn’t know how it could effect his meter, “but it just seems coincidental,” he said.
“Is there a potential that (the meter) was going haywire and the numbers were going forward,” he asked.
Morse pointed to the tests that show a meter working, albeit under-reporting.
“We have paid the water bill in full and on time, but we believe that this is faulty,” Glick said.
Without further proof, said Morse, “it is what it is.”
He added that 1.6 million gallons made no noticeable impact on the town’s usage.
“Where did the water go? I don’t know,” said Morse. “Flushomemters could stick, a disgruntled worker, could be anything.” He said that if fifty gallons per minute were pouring through the faucets for 20 days, “there’s your water. You’d be surprised how much water will go through a toilet,” he added.
He also pointed out that the Publick House should have been watching the building more closely. “Somebody’s got to inspect it.”
Glick said he’s sure it wasn’t leaking toilets, since the toilet bowl water has long since evaporated from lack of use. He also said he finds it hard to believe a disgruntled employee, or anyone else, would get into the locked building, turn on the faucets, then return to shut them off before the end of the quarter.
Selectman Tom Creamer said, “To me something’s wrong.”
Yet Morse, said whatever it is, there is no proof the town is responsible.
“I just find it hard to fathom,” Creamer went on. “On the surface, I look at this and I say, there’s no way this is accurate.”
“That’s what you say, but it doesn’t mean you’re right. That’s what you assume,” said Morse. Without proof the town was wrong, Morse said, “we have expenses to pump a million six gallons. That’s just the way it is. A lot of things are hard to explain.”
The Publick House has now had the water to the Orchard Restaurant shut off at the street.