Water is now flowing through infrastructure owned by the Town of Woodstock to nearly 800 households and businesses in Woodstock Village and to approximately 100 fire hydrants in the municipality, effective with the closure last week of the town’s purchase of the assets of the Woodstock Aqueduct Company (WAC).
Eighteen months of townwide deliberations and negotiations about the town’s acquisition of the 144-year-old, privately owned water utility concluded at a special meeting of the Woodstock Town Selectboard on Wednesday, April 30, when town officials inked a bevy of closing documents for the purchase of the WAC and all its assets. Selectboard members and the water utility’s former owners celebrated the real estate closing with a festive dispersal of confetti throughout the selectboard chambers in Town Hall at the conclusion of a 15-minute signing ceremony.
At a special Town Meeting on Oct. 29 of last year, one of the largest turnouts of voters in two decades overwhelmingly endorsed the town’s purchase of the privately held water utility’s assets by a vote of 383 to 103. Woodstock officials were given the okay to purchase the WAC for a total of $920,000, the entirety of which was slated to pay off the company’s existing debt. The funds for the sale were to be derived from two different streams: the first a pair of state grants, together totaling $463,000, and the remaining $457,000 coming out of the Town of Woodstock’s undesignated fund balance. Six weeks after the October purchase vote, at another special Town Meeting on Dec. 10, 2024, town voters okayed bond issues for three water-related capital projects and to acquire the WAC’s Vondell Reservoir, a backup reservoir and popular recreational spot for hiking and mountain biking.
For more on this, please see our May 8 edition of the Vermont Standard.
