WOODSTOCK – Janet Villacaro likes to take things in stride. When the Maine Department of Transportation told her a planned project to widen Route 26 in Bryant Pond village would disturb her water supply, and that they would drill a well for her on her own property, Villacaro didn’t worry.
“The man at the state was so polite,” said Villacaro of DOT environmental specialist Joshua Katz who, along with a five-member staff, handles drinking well claims across the entire state. State law mandates that the DOT remedy any upsets to water supplies caused by department operations.
When work on Route 26 began on June 25, Villacaro still relied on a spring-fed well for her household water supply. As road construction progressed, her water soon became unsafe to drink. “It smelled bad, looked bad and made us sick. We were vomiting for days,” Villacaro said in a recent interview at her home.
But she didn’t worry. She called “the nice man (Mr. Katz) at the state,” and within several days, D&L Well and Water Systems of Turner set up drilling operations in her front yard. After five days of drilling, though, the well depth had only reached 100 feet. But at that shallow depth, the well delivered an impressive 45 gallons per minute.
With all that water, Villacaro thought she was the luckiest person on earth. She joked about it with neighbors, offering to pipe some over to them. That is, until she realized her water was undrinkable – it smelled of rotten eggs, tasted like iron, looked brown, and stained her laundry and shower curtain brown while corroding and staining her plumbing fixtures.
“It’s just awful, awful, awful!” Villacaro said, holding up a white rug stained with large, dark bluish-gray splotches.
Danny Camire, a licensed well driller for Goodwin Well Drilling in Turner, said water quality issues like Villacaro’s can be caused by either poor well construction or simply poor water quality.
“Manganese can cause the rotten egg odor, but filtering systems to remove manganese are expensive,” Camire said. Although well drilling companies are responsible for well construction, they cannot be held responsible for the quality of the water, unless water quality is linked to poor well construction.
Also, surface water can seep into a fracture in the bedrock and spoil the well, he said.
Villacaro’s house sits only feet from a pond. Katz confirmed that surface water from the pond could be seeping into the ground water of the well. But Katz did not order a test for tannins, which would indicate surface water seepage.
“He (the state plumber installing the filter) told me tannins wouldn’t be in my water because there were no dead animals on my lot,” Villacaro said. “He said that’s the only thing that causes tannins.”
Tannins are a product of decaying plant matter, not decaying animals.
On Aug. 24, Katz visited Villacaro’s home and observed an odor “like rotten eggs” he thought to be hydrogen sulfide gas. On that day, Katz sent a sample of Villacaro’s water to the state lab. While it takes only five business days to have a water test done by an outside firm, Katz said it takes three to five weeks for the state to complete a water test and provide a report.
With limited resources to cover his responsibilities, he admits that often water test reports sit in a pile on his desk, “several inches thick,” until he has the time to deal with them.
When contacted by the Sun Journal on Sept. 20, Katz was in the field and did not know whether Villacaro’s water test report sat in that pile. “Had I known Ms.Villacaro was upset, I would have gone through the pile to find her report,” Katz said last week.
Katz later confirmed the report was in the pile. “She has high iron and high manganese. It’s off the charts,” he confirmed after reading the report.
The DOT received the report on Sept. 14, said DOT spokesman Herb Thompson. It sat “in the pile” for six days.
Katz promises the state will provide Villacaro a filtering system to remove the iron and manganese, and bring the water quality to a standard at least equal to the quality of her source prior to the DOT’s disruption of her well.
Another state official also said he would make sure she has bottled spring water until the remediations are in place.
As of Sept. 20, Villacaro had not heard a word from the state concerning her water quality. For almost two months, she has been hauling her drinking and cooking water from a nearby road-side spring. And her sinks, tub, clothing, linens and towels continue to be ruined.
“I guess I should have gotten mad,” she said. “I’m trying to be nice, but if they don’t fix this soon, I’m gonna be a mad pain in the butt!”
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