Update: Big Movement on Multiple Fronts 🌊

Update: Big Movement on

Thank you to everyone who has signed — we just crossed 600 signatures from over 100 communities. Here's what your support has helped accomplish over the past month:

Windham Board of Selectmen takes action.

On July 27, I presented our findings to the full Windham Board of Selectmen. The Board agreed to two concrete steps: directing Town legal counsel to examine Salem's water withdrawal rights, and engaging Windham's state legislative delegation to press NHDES directly on this issue.

Right-to-Know requests are paying off.

Three separate Right-to-Know requests to the Town of Salem have now produced over 900 pages of records. These documents confirm what we suspected: Salem's actual water demand (2.1–2.3 million gallons per day on average, spiking to over 4 MGD) is running well above the 2.01 MGD safe yield benchmark set for Canobie Lake back in 1996. The records also show Salem was formally declared in Severe Drought status in June 2026, with an internal engineering study now recommending demand management.

To put that in everyday terms:

An Olympic-sized swimming pool holds about 660,000 gallons. The 1996 safe yield benchmark works out to roughly 3 pools' worth of water a day. Salem's actual average draw is running 3.2 to 3.5 pools a day — and on peak days, over 6 pools a day are coming out of Canobie Lake.

We found the regulatory gap — and got it confirmed in writing.

The 1996 state order that governed Salem's withdrawals was terminated in 2014, and nothing was ever put in its place. Both NHDES's Drinking Water Bureau and Commissioner Robert Scott confirmed this in writing: NHDES has the legal authority to require an updated safe yield study, but is not currently using it. That's the heart of the problem, and it's the strongest card we hold.

Taking it to the State House.

Letters have gone out to all six of Windham's state legislators, plus a letter hand-delivered to Governor Ayotte and emails to our Executive Councilor. The ask is simple: press NHDES to exercise the authority it already has.

What's next:

We're watching for responses from our legislative delegation, tracking Windham's legal review of Salem's withdrawal rights, and keeping an eye on the Tuscan Village development in Salem, which will add significant new water demand on the same system.

None of this happens without the weight of everyone who signed. If you haven't shared this petition with a neighbor yet, now's a great time — the more voices, the harder this is to ignore.

Thank you for standing up for Canobie Lake.

— Kani