- [Pamela] Tonight, when wells run dry in Jamestown.

- We were running out of water and we were getting sick.

- [Pamela] Then, a sister's remarkable promise.

- He said, "The only way I'm getting outta here is if you, Betty Ann, go to school, you go to law school, you be my lawyer."

- [Pamela] And how Rhode Island's assault weapons ban passed with Ted Nesi.

(playfully pensive music) (playfully pensive music continues) - Good evening.

Welcome to "Rhode Island PBS Weekly".

I'm Anaridis Rodriguez.

- And I'm Pamela Watts.

We begin tonight in Jamestown, where there's been a battle over water.

- Residents whose wells have run dry have been refused access to tie into the town's municipal water supply, making their homes unlivable.

The town says it simply doesn't have enough water to help.

Reporter Olivia Ebertz takes a closer look at the issue and whether it could have been avoided.

The report is part of our continuing series, "One Storm Away".

- [Olivia] When Christina DiMeglio decided to move back to Rhode Island in 2016, she thought she'd found the perfect house on Connecticut Island.

- I loved Jamestown.

This house came on and it just all worked out timing with, I decided to move home, bought the house.

It all kind of happened all at once.

At the time, it was too good to be true.

It hasn't worked since 2021.

- [Olivia] What DiMeglio didn't know is that Connecticut Island has a low natural supply of drinking water and her house was running out.

- The well would would go dry.

I'd wait a couple hours and it would replenish and I'd be fine.

And that was every now and then, like, once in a blue moon.

- [Olivia] By the time the pandemic hit, DiMeglio's partner had moved in and the couple had a newborn.

Shortly after, their water supply trickled to a stop.

- Daily we were running out of water.

We were getting sick.

Our dog and cat were throwing up all the time.

I was getting bad rashes.

Our baby bottles, which was the big thing, had, like, a white film all over them.

And when they would dry, it was like powder, almost, like, it almost looks like cement.

And I was like, "Why is this happening?"

- [Olivia] After an inspection, engineers said that DiMeglio's well had run almost completely dry, and that her neighbors' wells would follow suit.

- "You are the unfortunate first."

I will never forget them saying that to me.

And I said, "When will this happen to everybody else?"

And they said, "Probably within the next five years."

- [Olivia] One by one, many of her neighbors did start losing pressure in their wells.

DiMeglio and four others applied for extensions through the Jamestown Board of Water and Sewer Commissioners.

- I have a bottle here, I don't know if you can see it, or if it's worth it, but this is a bottle that's been washed maybe twice in this water.

This is a bottle that was washed for a week.

I don't know if you can see the difference, but it's pretty horrible.

- [Olivia] Two meetings later, the commissioners unanimously denied all of the applications, claiming the island did not have enough water.

- I, personally, as much as it pains me on a personal level to these sincere applicants, there is no choice.

There is no responsible choice for us as water and sewer commissioners.

These applications fail.

They fail on their face.

- [Olivia] Ever since a devastating drought struck Connecticut Island in 1993, the town of Jamestown has instituted strict rules about who can and cannot be on municipal water.

The island is split into two water districts.

There's the Urban Water District, where the residents drink piped water that largely comes from an open reservoir.

And there's the Rural Water District, where residents rely on wells, which usually drill down to little pockets of fresh water in the bedrock under the island called fractures.

Both water sources are replenished by rainwater, which seeps into the ground and makes its way into the fractures and the aquifer.

To learn more about how the water sources work on Connecticut, I met with University of Rhode Island Professor of Hydrogeology, Thomas Boving.

- Think about a bathtub and every well owner is basically putting a straw into the groundwater.

And they're all sucking from the same reservoir.

And, as the reservoir responds by going down, assuming, like, in the bathtub where you turn off the faucet, that would be a drought, for example, it goes down, the guys with the straw that is not penetrating very deeply into the reservoir go dry quickly.

The ones with the deep straw, the deep well, can pump longer time.

At the same time, when the pumps in the deep wells run, they affect the the shallow wells.

(water dripping) - [Olivia] The town is concerned that the reservoir could run dry if additional homeowners use the water source.

Scientists like Boving say less development in an area makes it easier for heavy rain to be absorbed into the natural system rather than running off of concrete into the bay.

To capture the extra water, the town has bought up vacant tracks of land to prevent development.

But Professor Boving says there's no way to know whether the town's actions are working, since a hydrological study hasn't been conducted for the island in about 30 years.

- All this information would be very helpful for any municipality that is reliant on groundwater, or largely on groundwater or surface water, to understand where are the problem areas or where are the areas that we are pretty safe?

- [Olivia] But the town of Jamestown thinks it might not have enough water for its current Urban District Water customers.

It produced an analysis of water usage that shows, if every bedroom in the urban water district were occupied and using the full amount of water, the reservoir would go dry.

The projection is based on the 30-year-old hydrology study, measurements from the reservoir, and usage tracking.

Boving says this water issue will only get more difficult with climate change.

- It's already happening and it's predicted to change New England towards somewhat wetter conditions, on average.

But the devil is in the detail.

That doesn't mean it rains every day more and more, it means there can be times of extreme wet conditions, weeks of downpours, followed by droughts.

I'm more worried about the droughts because the droughts can prolong during the new normal.

(water sloshing) - In prolonged dry periods, brackish water can seep in, which is unhealthy to drink when treated with standard methods.

Luckily, Boving says there are ways to protect against this.

Do these places need to do a better job at planning for the future?

- The short answer is yes.

'Cause, if we manage our water resources, we can stretch 'em out to address these issues of droughts and whatnot.

The water resources are unevenly distributed, so there's some areas on an island that are maybe underutilized.

- [Olivia] Boving says conservation helps, but there are also other solutions.

There's desalination, though it is energy intensive.

And Boving says some communities in California have been recycling and consuming their own wastewater for years.

- There are these technologies that can turn pee water into drinkable water.

Think about the astronauts and the space station, right?

I mean, they have actually pioneered this system where it's a closed loop.

All the water on the space station is constantly recycled.

Has to be, because there's no other water resource.

So maybe take the space station and replace it with Connecticut Island and say, "Okay, we have X amount of water, we can recycle it."

Make, reuse, use technologies to turn water of lower quality into high quality water.

That technology exists.

- Town manager, Ed Mello, said Jamestown is in the early stages of looking into a desalination system, but it'll take years and cost many millions of dollars.

Do you wish that things had been done differently in the past to prepare for this?

- I think in, you know, everybody, in looking back and being Monday morning quarterbacks can be critical of what's happened in the past.

I don't think anybody can be critical of the protection that the commission has applied of a very valuable and finite resource that we've had.

With that being said, we do have a responsibility to try to find the future of water for Jamestown.

- [Olivia] When the DiMeglios and their neighbors were denied water extensions, some had to leave.

- We moved out.

We couldn't sell the house, we couldn't live in the house, and we couldn't rent the house, and so it sat here and we moved out.

- Where'd you move to?

- I moved in with my parents.

- [Olivia] Recently, DiMeglio's four neighbors appealed the town's decision to the State Board of Water Resources.

The board voted unanimously to grant the permission to extend the water main to their properties as well.

They reminded the town that state law requires them to allow residents to drink municipal water if they can prove they have no other way to get enough clean water.

As for DiMeglio, she and the town settled a lawsuit.

She and her husband are footing the bill to extend the main to her house and work has started on the waterline.

Although she has spent the last five years living in Providence, she still brings her kids to their home on the weekends.

- We fought really hard to remain members of this community and we want our children to know that they are accepted as members of this community.

- As Jamestown grapples with preserving water for its current customers, it is also looking to the future.

To prevent additional homeowners from being allowed to tie into municipal water, the town wants the state legislature to amend state law to allow the Jamestown Water and Sewer Commissioners to have the final say over who can and cannot connect to municipal water.

What is the municipality's responsibility to provide its residents, all of its residents, with water, access to clean drinking water?

- I don't think there'd be any hesitation or reservation by the commission to offer water if we had it.

But the reality is, we just don't today.

- To see more of our reporting on this issue, visit thepublicsradio.org Up next, a story of conviction, dogged determination, and the power of love.

One Rhode Island woman spent decades righting a wrong.

Her incredible quest has now come full circle in a fight for justice and peace.

And a warning, parts of this story may be disturbing to some viewers.

(engine rumbles) - [Betty Ann] We used to camp right across the water over here.

It was his special place and mine, too.

- [Pamela] For Betty Ann Waters, looking out on Burrillville's Echo Lake, the echoes of the past still reverberate.

Here she can reflect on the astonishing odyssey that has consumed more than half her life.

- I think how much he loved me.

He was the person in my life that believed in me the most, ever.

- [Pamela] He was her brother, Kenny Waters, just one year older.

They were two of nine children living on their grandfather's vegetable farm in the small town of Ayer, Massachusetts where Fort Devens was based.

- It was a lot of fun growing up in Ayer.

It was a very small town, it was an army town.

We didn't have a lot of neighbors back then, but we didn't need them because we were our own baseball team.

- [Pamela] And of all her siblings, Betty Ann was closest to her brother Kenny.

- And we just did everything together.

It was like we were best friends.

You know, we used to skip school together and we'd go just running through woods making tree houses and, you know, kinda just a farm life.

- But she admits her brother was mischievous.

He was no choir boy?

- No.

- [Pamela] Kenny was often getting into scrapes and, once, a knife fight.

He served in the Army, though, and eventually became a short order cook at the now-closed Park Street Diner, the place the community and the police went for coffee.

- And Mrs. Brow was a regular there.

Her friend worked at the diner.

I mean, it's a very small town, so everybody knows each other.

And Kenny used to see her and say hi to her and, you know, there was never any problem.

- [Pamela] But there was a problem for Katherina Brow, a fatal one, on a May morning in Ayer in 1980.

- We get a phone call from Kenny saying that Mrs. Brow was murdered.

And we're like, "What?"

- [Pamela] 48-year-old Brow, a neighbor of the Waters', was found in her trailer home, stabbed 30 times, in a violent robbery of cash and jewelry.

Kenny's live-in girlfriend was deeply distraught because-- - They asked him to come down to the police station to check out his alibi.

- [Pamela] He was cleared, eliminated as a suspect.

The case went cold.

But two years later, Kenny's now former girlfriend had a new boyfriend who called Ayer police.

- And he wanted to sell information to them.

And he gave them a story that his girlfriend knows that it was Kenny because she was living with him at the time and he came home that morning full of blood.

- Kenny's blood was O+, the same as the killer's.

But in the early eighties, there was no DNA testing.

Police claimed fingerprints left at the scene were unusable.

Betty Ann contends there was police misconduct in their eagerness to solve the vicious crime.

So did you ever believe that your brother could be guilty of such a crime?

- No, no!

- [Pamela] Why?

- Because it's just not his nature to go wanna rob somebody and kill them.

- Despite her conviction, her brother was falsely accused.

Kenny was indicted and later found guilty of murder just a few hours after a five day trial in 1983.

Yeah, so your heart dropped when they said, "Guilty?"

Oh my God, yes, 'cause we figured they would all see through all of it.

We thought he was coming home and we already planned dinner.

- [Pamela] 29-year-old Kenny Waters was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Inmates nicknamed him Muddy Waters because he suffered such severe blues.

Betty Ann remained in close contact, both frustrated by five years of unsuccessful appeals.

Suddenly Kenny stopped calling.

- He finally calls and I found out that he tried to commit suicide.

(sighs) Anyway, when he lost that last appeal, he cut himself.

I still can't talk about it.

- [Pamela] But she can talk about the major decision that would shape her future, becoming an attorney with a sole client, Kenny.

- So in our conversations, that very conversation, he said to me that he's never getting out of there unless I went to law school.

(laughs) - He told you that?

- Oh yeah, he did.

He said, "The only way I'm getting outta here is if you, Betty Ann, go to school, you go to law school, you be my lawyer."

And so it became a promise that, I promise I will do whatever I have to do to get to law school if you just stay alive.

- [Pamela] To keep him alive, Betty Ann, a single mother living in Bristol, worked as a bartender at Aidan's Pub while earning an undergraduate degree.

After being accepted into Roger Williams University's School of Law and beginning her studies, she discovered the Innocence Project, an organization that works to exonerate the wrongly incarcerated.

- And I learned about DNA and I'm like, "Wow."

I know there was a lot of blood in my brother's case.

I don't know if it still exists, but there was, and this could be the holy grail I'm looking for.

- [Pamela] Against all odds, she graduated, passed the bar exam, and 12 years later, as her brother's lawyer, she went after the evidence and was told it had been destroyed after so long.

That didn't stop her.

She persisted and finally, a clerk from the Middlesex County Courthouse, where Kenny was tried, returned her call.

- She goes, "Well, we did find a box," with my brother's name on it, and I'll never forget it, like, it was just this old corrugated, a dollar Staples box, you know?

They opened it up and I saw the plastic bags with the evidence I was looking for, like the material from that linen closet that had blood on it.

- [Pamela] She filed a motion to protect the evidence, then contacted the Innocence Project to test that DNA.

- And of course it comes back that it's not Kenny.

- [Pamela] So after 18 long years as a prison inmate, Betty Ann called her brother to say, "Promise kept."

- And I said, "Kenny, you wanna come home tomorrow?"

And, yeah.

Yeah.

- [Pamela] What'd he say?

- Yeah, you know, he was like, "What?

What are you talking about?"

I'm like, "No, tomorrow."

And, uh-- - What was that moment like when he walked up?

- Aw, it was crazy.

To think about it even today, it's, like, unbelievable.

I think that we were just beaming from ear to ear and didn't even have to say anything, you know?

- [Pamela] But her brother did have one thing to say.

- I think it's absolutely amazing that she's dedicated her life to this.

- [Pamela] Kenny Waters was a free man and a famous one.

Betty Ann and her brother were instant media celebrities on Oprah and all the morning shows.

- We had an absolute ball.

We had the, he had the best time of his life.

- [Pamela] But that joy would be short-lived.

Just six months after his prison release came another cruel twist of fate.

Kenny was walking to his brother's house in Middletown taking a shortcut when he fell off a wall and died from brain injuries.

Betty Ann, though grieving, says that half year together, some spent here on Echo Lake, was a saving grace.

- He died innocent and free and he was surrounded by his family, not leaving in a pine box in prison.

- [Pamela] And Betty Ann continued to be her brother's keeper, by giving him another measure of justice.

She sued the town of Ayer's Police Department and his estate was awarded millions.

Now, if this all sounds like the plot of a Hollywood movie, it is.

- [Foreperson] We find the defendant guilty, Your Honor.

(gavel bangs) (sighs) - We'll get you out, Kenny, you hear me?

- [Pamela] In 2010, actress Hillary Swank portrayed Betty Ann Waters in the film "Conviction"-- - Super proud of her!

- Based on the true story.

- To be talking about this film early.

If we can DNA test the murderer's blood, it'll prove Kenny's innocent.

- [Pamela] Still, Betty Ann was haunted by one more thing, finding the real killer.

The tool, forensic investigative genetic genealogy, a complex system matching DNA to a family line.

- I have a couple of plans right now to try to maybe figure out through the profile.

- [Pamela] And just a week after our conversation, this happened.

- Today, there was a major breakthrough in this case after it went unsolved for decades.

- We're able to determine, to an overwhelming statistical likelihood, that one of those brothers, Joseph Leo Boudreau, was the source for the DNA that had been left at the crime scene.

- Joseph Leo Boudreau, long deceased and formerly of Massachusetts, was identified as the real murderer through genetic genealogy.

After all this time, after all you went through, and now this.

- Yeah, I can't even believe it happened.

I had goosebumps throughout my entire body and I was like, "What?"

The first thing I wanted to do was call Kenny.

- [Pamela] Her beloved brother, their enduring bond.

Just one more incredible, indelible chapter of their story.

- I never imagined this and everything along the way, I really never imagined until it was over.

Then I can look back a little bit and say, "Oh, wow, that happened."

- [Pamela] If you could talk to him today, what would you say?

- [Betty Ann] I love you.

That's it.

- Betty Ann Waters now hopes to contact the real killer's family who cooperated with authorities by giving their DNA.

Finally, on this edition of "Weekly Insight", Anaridis and our contributor, WPRI Politics Editor, Ted Nesi, look at the final days of the Rhode Island General Assembly.

But first, a deeper dive into the assault weapons ban compromise and passage.

- Ted, welcome back.

The Rhode Island General Assembly's annual legislative session came to a dramatic end in the early hours of Saturday, June 21st.

It's always a long day and a long night for you and other State House reporters.

- Yes, I think I went to bed around 3:00 AM, Anaridis, which is not unusual for any of us who cover the State House on the last night of session.

The General Assembly, they just, they leave so much to the last minute.

I wanna say the House and Senate took roughly 300 roll call votes in less than 12 hours Friday into Saturday.

So for all the reporters, it's just kinda, it's triage, just trying to keep up with that many bills moving that fast in both chambers at the same time.

- Yeah, perhaps no bill got more attention than the assault weapons ban.

In the end, lawmakers ended up passing a modified measure.

Now it's with the governor for his signature, but certainly not what advocates really wanted.

- No, and it's a little bit of a complicated story.

But to try to simplify it, this debate has been going on for years about banning what critics call assault weapons.

That phrase is contested, I should note, by Second Amendment advocates.

Finally this year, for the first time, the House actually passed a full ban on sale, purchase, possession of these weapons.

But the Senate Judiciary Committee, as has been the case for years, did not have the votes for that.

And then the new Senate President, Val Lawson, who supports the bill personally, refused to go around the Judiciary Committee and put the bill on the floor some other way.

So the top Senate leaders at the last minute came up with a compromise, which was to ban the sale and purchase of those weapons in Rhode Island, but not possession.

The Rhode Island Coalition Against Gun Violence, which is pretty influential up there, they fought all week for the full House ban, but by Friday night, it was clear that the only thing that might pass is the Senate bill.

And House leaders decided, they put that on the floor, it came up for votes, was sort of the argument that something was better than nothing and that this was still progress in their eyes.

- And advocates are already saying that they're going to come back next year and push for an expanded bill that also bans the possession of these firearms.

Now, let's turn to the state budget.

Also making big headlines, an unexpected announcement by Governor Dan McKee on June 25th saying that he would not sign the budget bill that was passed by lawmakers.

He also said he would not veto it, so it will become law without his signature.

This certainly was a surprise to a lot of people.

- Yeah, I mean, I'd say so.

The governor had made some noises toward the end of the legislative session about being unhappy with all the tax and fee increases that state lawmakers had put into the budget.

We talked about some of those last week here on the segment, Anaridis, the two cent increase in the gas tax, the $4 monthly fee on everyone's health insurance plans, the so-called Taylor Swift Tax on million dollar second homes.

But calling a news conference to attack the budget was, for McKee, a pretty dramatic step.

- Hmm, let's listen to what some of the governor had to say at that news conference.

- We didn't have to raise taxes on anyone in this budget.

We could have balanced the budget and met the most important issues that were still on the table with closing some of the gaps that happened after the fact.

I still stand in a position that says, let's tax people when we need to, but when we don't need to, hold off until we need to.

- Critics are going as far as saying that this is a PR move for the governor, that he should have vetoed it if he felt strongly about it.

House Speaker, Joe Shekarchi, and Senate President, Val Lawson, both defended the budget in a statement, saying that he'd left significant holes for them to fill because of the problems with his initial budget plan and also arguing that the tax and fee hikes were needed to pay for healthcare and also transportation.

But it all seems very Rhode Island to the voters, right, this interesting dynamic that we see at the State House.

- Yeah, I mean, part of why it was surprising, Anaridis, is 'cause the governor has really prioritized good relations with the General Assembly for the last four years, so this felt kind of out of character.

I do think the policy disagreement is real, about whether those tax and fee increases are necessary.

But I also, you can't avoid the politics here.

I mean, Speaker Shekarchi is being widely discussed as a potential candidate for governor next year.

Well, Governor McKee wants to be a candidate for governor next year.

And so I do think this was also partly a way to put a little political distance between the two of them and for McKee to get a little bit of a shot in at Shekarchi and say, "Hey, I'm not going anywhere."

- Interesting to see how all of this unfolds.

- [Ted] It will be.

- Thank you for being here, Ted.

- Good to be here.

- And that's our broadcast this evening.

Thank you for joining us.

I'm Pamela Watts.

- And I'm Anaridis Rodriguez.

We'll be back next week with another edition of "Rhode Island PBS Weekly".

You can now listen to our entire broadcast every Monday night at seven on The Public's Radio.

And don't forget to follow us on Facebook and YouTube.

You can also visit us online to see all of our stories in past episodes at ripbs.org/weekly or listen to our podcast on your favorite streaming platform.

Goodnight.

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