THE COMMUNITIES THAT ring the Quabbin Reservoir have long found themselves in a double bind. They protect the state’s largest drinking water source, but don’t get to drink from it. And they’re barred from developing the land around it, but say they aren’t compensated enough to make that tradeoff fair.

That tension has only grown with persistent drought. The Central Massachusetts region, where the Quabbin sits, remains at Level 2 – Significant Drought status even as other parts of the state have recovered somewhat.

This week on The Codcast, Jennifer Smith talks with senior reporter Jordan Wolman about his recent reporting on the towns surrounding the reservoir — a manmade lake built a century ago that now supplies drinking water to 3.1 million people in and around Greater Boston. The surrounding towns rely on smaller wells and municipal sources that are far more exposed to drought and contamination.

Wolman noticed the board of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, which operates the Quabbin, was holding a rare meeting in Belchertown, one of the Quabbin’s seven “host communities,” and once he tuned in, he said, “there was this just sense of desperation.”

The first half of 2026 was so dry it wasn’t safe for Belchertown athletes to play soccer and football on their home fields this fall. The well serving New Salem’s town hall ran dry, forcing staff without water and workable restrooms into borrowed office space.

The mood is dour, Wolman said. “It just creates this dynamic that’s festering of, ‘Why do we live near the biggest body of water in Massachusetts and we can’t drink from it? And we’re struggling ourselves with access to water because of drought, because of contamination, whereas Greater Boston is fairly insulated from this,’” he said. “And so it creates that sort of us-versus-them mentality, I think, that’s started to really spill over here.”

Underneath it is a fight about money and equity.

The towns get payments in lieu of taxes, or PILOTs, for the state-owned land around the reservoir that they can’t develop to protect the critical watershed, but they say those payments aren’t cutting it. Five of the Quabbin’s seven host communities have received flat PILOT payments for five straight years running. New Salem’s payment works out to $21 an acre, against a statewide median of $127.

Wolman said MWRA officials counter that raising those payments could mean higher water rates for customers in lower-income communities served by the Quabbin, like Chelsea and Everett.

That fight is now tucked into an environmental bond bill in closed-door conference committee negotiations. Gov. Maura Healey has waded in, too, writing a letter to the MWRA this month urging it to “more fully recognize” Quabbin communities. Wolman said the letter matters more for what it signals politically than any specific policy requirement.

“She’s asking not necessarily directly for increased pilot payments, not necessarily for a permanent seat on the board of the authority,” he said. “She’s asking the MWRA to sort of take good faith measures to collaborate and partner with and coordinate with these towns on their water access concerns, on their local police and fire response.”

On the episode, Smith and Wolman discuss the roots of the PILOT payment disparity (8:00), how drought restrictions fall unevenly on Quabbin towns versus Boston-area MWRA customers (18:00), and what Healey’s letter to the MWRA does and doesn’t accomplish (28:00).