Cities test water quality in storm-swollen Androscoggin
Kevin Gagne had a caution for Jeff Beaule as the two piloted their little boat to a water quality testing station on the Androscoggin River Thursday morning: Keep your mouth closed, he said, you wouldn’t want any river water splashing in.
“And remember to wash your hands when you get out,” Gagne, Lewiston’s Public Service deputy director, added. “You probably don’t want to eat your lunch until you’ve washed your hands.”
It’s not that the Androscoggin is polluted – not most of the time, at any rate.
But on Thursday, several hours after heavy rains had finally stopped, the river was swollen with runoff from upstream streets and farms, parking lots and road culverts.
“Most of the year, here on the upper part of the river, I’d swim in it,” Gagne said. “Unless there was a storm. Then I’d give it a few days before swimming.”
The storm run-off effect, that’s what Gagne and Beaule, Lewiston water system coordinator, are testing.
Parking lots and farms – called non-point sources – are only part of the problem. The biggest concern, especially for the state and federal government, is combined sewer overflows. Those are places where the sanitary sewer and the storm sewer run together. Heavy rains can overwhelm the sewers, causing sewage to overflow.
The solution 20 years ago was to channel discharges into the Androscoggin River. That kept those sewage overflows from backing up into people’s homes and into the city streets.
But as of two years ago, those discharges became illegal and the federal government began requiring cities like Lewiston and Auburn to build parallel sewers to drain off storm water.
So far Lewiston has completed one system and both cities are working on others. They have 12 more years to complete the work.
In the meantime, both state and federal government require regular testing of water quality.
The cities of Lewiston and Auburn posted three water quality testing stations in the river on Oct. 15. The first is a mile upstream of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Bridge, the second is behind the Lewiston-Auburn Water Pollution Control Authority and a third is just upstream from the Durham boat launch. The three stations regularly test the water quality of the river before it reaches the Twin Cities, as it passes through and after it leaves.
Wednesday’s storm threatened to overwhelm the automatic stations, so Gagne and Beaule braved the rain and pulled the equipment. They were back on the water Thursday morning testing the quality by hand.
Gagne took samples from each of three spots and then took the water temperature and oxygen levels. The samples would be taken to a lab for testing. The oxygen levels give an idea of how much pollution is in the water – less oxygen means more pollution. And water temperature tells how much of anything – oxygen or pollution – the water can contain.
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