Letter: Mayor Macksey deserves credit for protecting Notch Reservoir

(This letter first appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on 3/16/2026)

To the editor: As a result of North Adams Mayor Jennifer Macksey’s decision about a year ago to not log the wild forests surrounding the Notch Reservoir, the likely damage to the drinking water supply for the residents and businesses of North Adams and the surrounding towns was averted. ("Amid public backlash, North Adams pulls out of a controversial forest management plan at Notch Reservoir," Eagle, Dec. 20, 2024.)

The mayor should be publicly praised for her difficult but smart decision. She did a truly great thing.

As a public health professional, a large part of my duties had to do with ensuring safe and sanitary drinking water, which I believe to be a human right. Without good water, we can’t survive physically, economically or as a community. Our businesses depend on safe and clean water, and our children depend on us to protect them and other vulnerable members of our community from unsafe water. I believe that clean water and the intact forests that produce it should enjoy the highest levels of protection that can be legally established.

Right now, the city of North Adams has the best opportunity to permanently protect the Notch Reservoir and the Williams Reservoir forested areas for this and future generations. The community should seek available “climate-forest reserves” state funding to permanently protect this irreplaceable resource that all residents and businesses rely on, once and for all, before some other group comes forward with another short-sighted proposal to log these watershed forests for private profit. Mayor Macksey can work with state officials, the community and a local land trust to put in place a “forever wild” conservation restriction that would designate these forested acres as off-limits to logging forever. It would cost the city nothing, but future generations would remember that this mayor had the foresight to permanently protect the water upon which we all depend.

Glen Ayers, Goshen

The writer is a registered sanitarian, a soil scientist and a retired Massachusetts certified public water supply operator.