Water tower silenced

PHOTO BY ROB BENCHLEY Slate gray is the color of the new water tower at 43 Polpis Road, and there will be no lettering spelling out the word, "Nantucket" on this storage tank.

The Historic District Commission voted 3-2 on Oct. 20 to allow the Wannacomet Water Company to revise its application for this twomillion gallon elevated storage tank that it raised to the top of its concrete column on Monday. The HDC had previously asked the town's water supplier to liven up its tank when Wannacomet General Manager Bob Gardner originally presented his plans for the new tank two years ago.

"Since this is going to be a giant piece of infrastructure and going to be there for a long time, the commission at the time said 'you need to re-think this'" said HDC chairman Dirk Roggeveen. "They came back with a drawing with 'Nantucket' on it."

Roggeveen believes the town's name or some other recognizable, unique Nantucket identifier belongs on this water tank such as a whale, a big W for Whalers, or another word or illustration alerting all that this is Nantucket.

"Like the Citgo sign in Boston, some things become iconic," he said. "I just thought that something could be done on it that was interesting. It was actually part of the deal that the HDC approved in the first place. I think there is something fun you can do with a water tower."

But the lettering was not in Wannacomet's original plan nor did public opinion support reminding the populace of which island they resided on.

"Without a question, it was not part of our original design," said Gardner. "That was a compromise on our part to keep the project moving to satisfy the HDC at that time to get the building permit. We looked at it again and felt that we had to stay with that design, that coloring."

Despite Roggeveen's and Diane Coombs' belief that something other than slate gray paint belonged on this new water tank, HDC members Linda Williams, John McLaughlin and David Barham agreed with Gardner, voting to allow Wannacomet its blank painting scheme.

"On the Nantucket skyline, I want these to be unobtrusive and that is best accomplished leaving it without lettering," said Barham at the Oct. 20 HDC meeting. "I like the subtle paint patches of the Washing Pond standpipe."

Williams agreed and said that she and McLaughlin were very much against drawing any more attention to the new tower than necessary, and that Barham was the swing vote, having first voted for Wannacomet to return with revised plans showing something more interesting than just the painted tower.

"In the Midwest where you don't know what township you're in, they actually have that," said Williams. "Here, if you don't know you're on Nantucket already, you've got a problem. I think it's completely inappropriate. It's a water tower. It looks like a water tower. I don't think you need to paint Nantucket on it."

With the design of the tower now modified to meet Wannacomet's utilitarian needs and the storage tanks resting on top of their columns, Gardner said work crews from Chicago Bridge & Iron, the contractor building this tower and the new 400,000-gallon tank in 'Sconset, will spend the rest of the fall wrapping up all of the exterior work on the tanks before they knock off for the winter. With the goal of having both tanks filled with water and ready for service by mid-June, the builders plan to return in late winter-early spring to pour the concrete floors in each tower, install all electrical infrastructure and test the computer control systems for each storage tank, said Gardner.

Both the town water district's second tank, on 38 acres in the State Forest off Polpis Road, which is 94 feet tall at an elevation of 70 feet and the 'Sconset water district's new tank at 150 feet tall adjacent to the 'Sconset baseball field are elevated storage tanks, meaning that their entire contents can be used rather than just the top portion of their water columns, maintaining water pressure throughout the systems. I