PARIS – After Jamie Redlon stared for several moments at the foamy water gushing out of a discharge pipe onto her property, she turned and walked into her horse barn.
Paris Utility District operators were monitoring the discharge from the recently renovated water tower. “I stood with those guys, a little dumbfounded,” Redlon said Wednesday. “Then I went back to the barn to clean. That’s my favorite place to be.”
But soon after, Redlon said she called a lawyer, the Maine Public Utilities Commission and the Maine Department of Environmental Protection to see if there was any way to stop the utility district from draining its water tower of about 150,000 gallons into her horse pasture.
On Tuesday, between 50,000 and 60,000 gallons poured onto her land before the district turned the water off, according to Steve Arnold, the district manager.
Arnold said Wednesday morning that he and a DEP official planned to visit Redlon’s property on Paris Hill to discuss a solution.
“We will present a couple scenarios to her and see what happens,” Arnold said before the trip.
By Wednesday afternoon, the district agreed to wait until Friday to see if a water test shows that the tower is clean of paint compounds. Then it will drain the tower through its system, not Redlon’s land, according to DEP environmental specialist Stewart Rose.
The utility district recently completed a project to rehabilitate the 30-year-old tower on Paris Hill. The tower was drained, repaired and repainted. Then it was refilled, but the district decided to drain it as a precautionary measure to ensure its sanitation, according to Arnold.
The water flowed through a discharge pipe underneath Redlon’s driveway, which has been there as long as the tower, Arnold said.
Redlon was taken by surprise because she said none of her deeds showed the existence of the discharge line when she bought the property in 1997, and now she’s concerned it will lower her property’s value.
“We might not have bought the property had we known there’s a pipe,” she said. “That’s a lot of destruction.”
She became aware of the pipe a only couple of months ago when the rehabilitation project began. The pipe was dug up, and Redlon said the utility district promised it would re-cover that area and replant grass there.
The district at that point drained a little bit of rusty water out of the tower, Redlon said, and she said she was told not to expect any more.
Arnold said the water tower will likely not have to be drained again for another 30 years.
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