At Shutesbury’s 290th annual Town Meeting on May 31, our small Massachusetts town approved a $7.7 million budget for FY26. Payments-in-lieu-of-taxes for state-owned land, including the one-third of our town taken by the state for the Quabbin watershed area, cover less than 5% of that budget. Residential property taxes will pay for 73%, which is a much higher portion than is covered by property taxpayers in most towns.

For other communities, the solution to this problem would be to spread out the burden by stimulating taxable growth — additional homes, more businesses, new industry. But for Shutesbury and the seven other Quabbin towns, our ability to do that is constrained by the need to keep the reservoir pristine: one-third of our town’s land lies in the watershed area and is thus, rightly, locked away from development. That keeps Boston’s water supply safe and clean, but it also means the people of Shutesbury pay an additional $2.8 million in property taxes to make up for the tax revenue we lose so the people of greater Boston can drink our water.

We need a new solution to this problem — one that is fair to the people of the Quabbin region and financially feasible for the people of greater Boston. The idea proposed in the new “Act Relative to the Quabbin Watershed and Regional Equity” (S.546 and H.1042) is that solution. For mere pennies per gallon on the average monthly water bill in Boston, Shutesbury and the other Quabbin towns would be recompensed for much of the new development taxes we are forced to forego for being stewards of greater Boston’s water supply.

Massachusetts refers to itself as a “commonwealth,” a place defined by the belief that we have an obligation to one another and the common good. The people of Enfield, Greenwich, Prescott, and Dana lived up to that ideal, surrendering farms, businesses, homes of generations for the benefit of the people of eastern Massachusetts. Those four towns are gone now, but the eight towns surrounding the reservoir still pay an ongoing price so the people it serves can have reliable, clean, safe water. For 80 years, we have subsidized the cost of that water with our higher taxes. But we can no longer afford to do so. While Boston drinks our water, we drown.

Recently, the chair of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority’s advisory committee shrugged off the financial crisis in our towns as mere “insatiable demand” for revenue, but our need to be able to afford to live in our homes, have schools for our children, roads we can drive on, emergency services to keep us safe, and, yes, water that we too can drink are not “insatiable demands.” Like Boston’s need for our water, they are matters of survival. The chair asserted that greater Boston “always pays while [the Quabbin towns] continue to receive.” But Shutesbury pays $2.8 million in denied tax revenues every year, and greater Boston receives 73 billion gallons of our water per year at a fraction of its true cost. The chair considers the Quabbin towns to be “sufficiently compensated” already, but “sufficient” compensation would be the $2.8 million in lost tax revenue we are forced to shoulder because of the reservoir.

This past fiscal year, the state paid Shutesbury $31,206 for its land in town — that’s 1.1% of what that land would provide if it were developed and taxed. Would any reasonable person truly consider paying 1.1% of something’s value to be “sufficient compensation?” In July 1927, The New York Times concluded its coverage of the Quabbin project by observing, “The people of the valley of the Swift River accept [the reservoir plan] … with resignation and with dignity. And Greater Boston by no means is indifferent to the tragedy which the need of the city inflicts upon these innocent bystanders.”

Those of us who live around and safeguard the Quabbin hold out hope that the people of greater Boston remain today, as they were in 1927, “by no means … indifferent” to the very real plight endured on their behalf by their fellow commonwealth residents.

Matteo Pangallo lives in Shutesbury.