It was like a best case scenario last month, when a small-engine plane crashed last month into a feeder pond of the Quabbin Reservoir near New Salem, Massachusetts.
No fuel leaked into the drinking water source and the pilot survived.
That was one take away from this week's review of the incident at a meeting of the Massachusetts Water Supply Protection Trust.
Officials who oversee the state's watershed discussed how local and state response could be improved, and what needs to be in place if this were to happen again. They highlighted two areas.
Officials agreed that because of the vast location and oversight of the reservoir, and several agencies responded to the crash, determining early who is in charge is critical to accident response.
Authorities also need to make sure that watershed personnel have information on the many ponds that feed into the Quabbin Reservoir.
A broader question came up about the risk of future incidents; can there be a no-fly zone over the reservoir?
That's been asked before, said Stephen Estes Smargiassi, the interim director of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority.
"There is a requirement under the FAA that folks be above a minimum altitude," Smargiassi said, "but the FAA has not been willing to establish a no fly zone over the reservoir."
If there were a specific circumstance where Quabbin Reservoir authorities wanted a no-fly zone for a week, Smargiassi said that might be possible.
"We have over the years had conversations with the folks out at Westover Air Base about some of their training flights and reminding them that they need to be at a higher altitude," he said adding that if you, if you think about the location of the reservoir "there are planes flying over Quabbin all day, every day."
What officials can do he said is be prepared and know ahead of time about what are the best practices if something goes wrong in the watershed — a plane crash or worse.
"The team did pretty well," Smargiassi said, adding that personnel must be trained in setting up spill-protection booms in the water, rapid response water sampling and understanding the travel time of fuel, if it were to enter reservoir, looking at dilution factors and how the various kinds of treatment provided affect various kinds of pollutants.
