South Bristol School’s water contamination saga appears to have an end in sight.
South Bristol Select Board member Adam Rice said he’s confident the school, its staff, and students, will have potable drinking water by the beginning of the 2025-2026 school year in September.
“We’re really close to the finish line on this thing,” Rice said. “Every part of the plan we implemented and presented to the voters has been successful to this point.”
In early spring 2023, water testing at SBS revealed elevated PFAS levels, prompting state officials to declare it unsafe for consumption. As a temporary solution, the school has relied on bottled water for students and staff.
PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are synthetic chemicals that don’t break down easily in the natural environment, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency website.
The substances have been widely used in consumer products and industrial applications, such as creating cleaning products or water resistant fabrics, since the 1940s.
According to the Maine Division of Environmental and Community Health, most people in the U.S. have been exposed to some level of PFAS, and prolonged exposure above certain thresholds may pose health risks.
At the town’s annual meeting on March 12, 2024, South Bristol voters approved allocating $100,000 from the Stratton Fund to cover the costs of drilling a new well and related work.
On May 30, 2024, the South Bristol Select Board awarded a $48,735 contract to Hanley Construction, of Bristol, for earthwork to install piping for the new well and septic system.
Reilly Well Drilling, of Bristol, dug the new well on Aug. 26. The school received word at the end of October from the Maine Drinking Water Program the water had passed initial testing for PFAS levels.
The new well produces two gallons more per minute than the previous and has a static level of 20 feet, which, according to Rice, means that it has somewhere around 600 gallons of water ready to pump at any time.
While the presence of PFAS was an important contaminant for town officials and school administrators to address, Rice said it has allowed them to fix other issues such as the outdated septic constructed in 1961.
“PFAS was just the tipping point,” he said.
By the beginning of August, lines from the old septic were reconstructed and attached to a new septic system that had been installed when the new gymnasium was completed in 2007.
Currently, the project is waiting for new housing for the water treatment system to arrive from Shed City in Warren, a shed building business, and further construction is constrained to times when the students are not on the premises, according to Rice.
While the new well passed its testing and met the state requirement for potable water, the radon levels were higher than town and school officials liked. Rice said the water treatment system will further mitigate radon, as well as any elevated manganese and iron levels.
“The building and the property and everything attached is the ward of the town of South Bristol, when it comes to bigger infrastructure,” he said. “We want to make sure that the project is laid out in a way that benefits the future of the building … it’s just time to get it done.”
The next regularly scheduled South Bristol School Committee meeting is at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 4 at the school.
The select board’s next meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 6 at the town office.
