New Gloucester funds search for safe drinking water

NEW GLOUCESTER — Selectmen on Monday approved spending up to $50,000 in an effort to find a public water supply for residents and businesses in the Upper Gloucester area.

For two decades, the town has supplied bottled drinking water to homes and businesses that have private wells contaminated by salt from the town's open sand/salt pile. Other wells are contaminated with benzene from leaking underground gasoline tanks and the chemical MTBE used as an additive in gasoline.

Lawrence Zuckerman, a member of the New Gloucester Land Management Planning Committee, told the board that 26 households in Upper Gloucester village have contaminated water supplies. He said the effort to find a safe water supply for residents is a high priority for the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.

The town will use $9,300 to set up monitoring wells for the recharge area surrounding the former fairgrounds on Bald Hill Road. Between $25,000 and $40,000 will be spent to have a well continuously pumped to determine a safe water supply yield. The money will come from the Pineland Tax Increment Fund.

Both the town and the Maine Department of Environmental Protection are working jointly on the project. Drumlin Environmental LLC has been trying to locate a deep aquifer with a high yield of safe water to supply roughly 70 households in Upper Gloucester. The aquifer on the 31-acre fairgrounds property is being studied.

The fairgrounds was the site of horse racing and horse training until the town purchased the property in the 1990s.

In other business, the board approved applying for an Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant of $9,986.

It also agreed that a septic system ordinance revision would be sent to a joint committee to be presented to voters at a special town meeting. The town ordinance is more restrictive than the state plumbing code regarding setback distances between replacement septic systems and drinking water wells.

Small nonconforming lots built upon prior to enactment of the town's zoning ordinance and lots in higher density districts are particularly affected, Town Planner Paul First advised the board in writing. "By not allowing the updating of these septic systems, these well intended setback requirements could help to foster unsafe conditions," he said.