Biddeford and Saco Water Company

Working Hard For You

Biddeford and Saco Water Company is proud to present to you our third annual Water Quality Report. We are pleased to announce that our record for meeting all State and Federal drinking water laws remains exemplary. The reason is simple; all of our staff and associates are dedicated toward one clear goal - Quality First. With a focus on customer service and efficiency in operations, we continue to strive for excellence through new water quality programs that will ensure a reliable drinking water supply for years to come. Preserving the health and well being of all our customers is an enormous task that we eagerly assume with dedication and determination. If you have any health concerns relating to the information in this report, we encourage you to contact your health care provider. We are committed to providing you with this information about your water supply, because customers who are well informed are our best allies in supporting improvements necessary to maintain our ability to provide the highest quality drinking water.

For more information about this report, or for any questions relating to your drinking water, please call either Norm Lavigne, our Treatment Manager, at (207) 282-9141 or Jerry Mansfield, President of our Company, at (207) 282-1543. Idividual and group tours of our Saco River treatment facility and public speakers for community meetings can be arranged by calling (207) 282-9141.

Where Does My Water Come From?

The Saco River is our sole source of water. It begins as a small stream high in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and flows through about 124 miles of New Hampshire and Maine forest and farmland before reaching our treatment plant. The Saco River Watershed actually covers an area of roughly 1,700 square miles in central New Hampshire and southwestern Maine. We are fortunate that the Saco River is one of the cleanest major rivers in Maine and New England due in part to the lack of any substantial industrial development along the Saco River shoreline. In fact, the majority of the Saco River in Maine has been given the cleanest rating possible for water. Demand is great for high quality drinking water: we provide about 5.4 million gallons of water every day to a population of between 45,000 and 200,000 people (depending on the time of year). To learn more about our watershed on the Internet, go to U.S. EPA's Locate Your Watershed ( www.epa.gov/surf2/hucs/01060002). Additional information on the Saco River watershed and land use regulations in place for the watershed can also be obtained through the Saco River Corridor Commission's Internet site ( www.srcc-maine.org), or by visiting our office.

How is My Water Treated And Purified?

The treatment process consists of a series of steps. First, raw water is drawn from the Saco River and pumped directly to a mixing tank at our treatment facility where alum, lime and polymer are added. The addition of these chemicles causes small particles to adhere to one another making them heavy enough to settle into a basin from which sediment is removed. After settling, chlorine and polymer are added for disinfection ard turbidity removal, respectively (turbidity is a common measure of the clarity of water). The water is then filtered through layers of fine coal and silicate sand. As smaller, suspended particles are removed, turbidity disappears and clear water emerges. Chlorine is added again at this point as a precaution against any bacteria that may still be present. (We carefully monitor the amount of chlorine, adding the lowest quantity necessary to protect the safety of your water without compromising taste.) Finally, lime (used to adjust the final pH of the water), fluoride (used to prevent tooth decay), a corrosion inhibitor (used to protect distribution system pipes) and ammonia (used to reduce the formation of THMs, a common by-product of disinfection) are added before the water is pumped to sanitized resevoirs and watertowers, and into your home or business.

Substances Expected to be in Drinking Water

The sources of drinking water (both tap water and bottled water) include rivers, lakes, streams, ponds, reservoirs, springs, and wells. As water travels over the surface of the land or through the ground, it dissolves naturally occurring minerals, possibly including radioactive material, and can pick up substances resulting from human or animal activity.

Substances that may be present in source water include microbes such as viruses and bacteria, inorganic salts and metals, pesticides and herbicides, and radioactive contaminants. Drinking water, including bottled water, may reasonably be expected to contain small amounts of some of these substances. The presence of these substances does not necessarily indicate that water poses a health risk. Under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) protects the public health by setting national limits for hundreds of these substances in public drinking water supplies.

Special Health Information

Some people may be more vulnerable to contaminants in drinking water than the general population. Immuno-compromised persons such as persons with cancer undergoing chemotherapy, persons who have undergone organ transplants, people with HIV/AIDS or other immune system disorders, some elderly, and infants can be particularly at risk from infections. These people should seek advice about drinking water from their health care providers. USEPA/CDC guidelines on appropriate means to lessen the risk of infection by Cryptosporidium and other microbial contaminants are available from the USEPA's Safe Drinking Water Hotline (800) 426-4791.

Drinking Water Improvement Projects

As all of us who live in the area know, the year 2000 was an extremely busy construction year in Southern Maine! The Water Company spent considerable time and material to relocate our facilities in order to acommodate all the roadway reconstruction projects undertaken by the Maine DOT and the cities and towns in our service area. Roadway reconstruction projects ongoing in our area last year included: Portland Road, James Street, Pond Street, Ferry Road, and Spring Street, Saco; Alfred Road, South and Lamothe Streets, Biddeford; and Saco, Highland, and Maplewood Avenues, Old Orchard Beach.

Our Saco river treatment facility also saw its share of improvement projects during the year, including replacement of some aging electrical conduits, improvements to our sludge processing equipment, and the installation of an automated monitoring and control system. Our new system provides instantaneous, audible feedback to operators throughout the facility of changes in status of the key functions of our treatment process.

Information on the Internet

For information about possible health effects relating to substances that might be found in drinking water, visit Gemini Group's site ( www.gemgrp.com) and click on the Health Effects Directory. The EPA Office of Water (www.epa.gov/watrhome) has a web site that provides a substantial amount of information on many issues relating to water resources, water conservation and public health. The Maine Drinking Water Program hosts a web site as well (janus.state.me.us/dhs/eng/water/index.htm) that has complete and current information on water issues in our own state.

Rate Stability Despite Increasing Pressures

One of our significant achievements in recent history has been the fact that the rates we charge for water service have not changed since May 1994. We well know that nobody likes to see rates increase. We do what we can to hold the line, and have been very successful in keeping the rates our customers pay far below the average paid by folks served by other water utilities in Maine for similar services.

Recently, though, we have seen large icreases in the prices we have to pay for some very essential services. Not surprisingly, the cost sectors where we have seen the biggest increases are for the most part energy-related, i.e. the cost of electricity, heating oil, propane, and gas. The major increases in the cost of these items, several newly mandated water quality monitoring programs, along with normal inflationary increases we have seen in the cost of most everything else we require to operate, are making it quite likely that we will be forced to apply for an increase in rates sometime in the not too distant future. We will do our best to avoid this course of action, as always, and will keep you informed of any decisions we make on rates. As far as the timing is concerned, if we do decide to proceed, it is unlikely that any increase would become effective until sometime in the spring of 2002, which would be eight years after our last increase.

Monitoring Water Quality in the Saco River Watershed

The Saco River Corridor Commission is in the process of starting a new water quality monitoring program. This new venture will eventually lead to the testing of numerous sites along the Saco, Ossipee, and Little Ossipee Rivers. These three rivers are all located within the Saco River basin. The basin covers an area of some 1,700 square miles in total. Although most of our customers are much more familiar with the portions of these rivers that flow through Maine, we must remember that each of these rivers has its beginning in the State of New Hampshire. Therefore, it is a big plus that the Green Mountain Conservation Group of South Effingham, New Hampshire, will be joining the Saco River Corridor Commission in this new program. If anyone is interested in becoming a volunteer, please contact the Saco River Corridor Commission at (207) 625-8123 or visit their web site at www.srcc-maine.org.

New Drinking Water Regulations

We will be affected by several new drinking water regulations in the near future. The Unregulated Contaminants Rule will require public water systems to analyze initially for up to 25 contaminants, which are not currently regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). This regulation is essentially a national occurrence survey. Our monitoring data along with the data gathered by thousands of other water systems nationwide will make up a database the US EPA will utilize to determine the occurence of these compounds nationally and whether or not any might warrant future regulation.

Another regulation to become effective in January 2001 is the Interim Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rule (IESWTR). This regulation, which builds upon the Surface Water Treatment Rule implemented in 1991, essentially puts into place new tougher monitoring and reporting regulations to ensure the efficient operation of water treatment filtration facilities.

Finally, the Stage I-Disinfection, Disinfection Byproducts Rule (Stage I-DDBPR) will become effective in January 2001 as well. This regulation reduces the allowable concentrations of trihalomethanes in drinking water from 100 ppb to 80 ppb and adds a regulatory standard for a whole new group of five specific disinfection byproducts. It will also mandate minimum disinfection requirements for water treatment facilities in order to improve the control of microbials in drinking water.

Our finished water quality has exceeded these new "tougher" regulatory standards for years. We do not anticipate any specific modification in our current treatment practices to comply with these new regulations. The only impact we anticipate will be the modification of the compliance reports we send each month to the State regulatory agency. However, there will be a significant increase in monitoring costs for the necessary laboratory analyses.

What's In My Water?

We are pleased to report that during the past year, the water delivered to your home or business complied with, or did better than, all state and federal drinking water requirements. Each year we analyze over 70,000 water samples for bacteria, turbidity, inorganic contaminants, lead and copper, nitrate volatile organic contaminants, total trihalomethanes, and synthetic organic contaminants. For your information, we have compiled a list in the table below showing which substances were detected in our drinking water during 2000. Although all of the substances listed below are under the Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) set by the U.S. EPA, we feel it is important that you know exactly what was detected and how much of the substance was present in the water. None of the 120 other substances regulated by EPA were detected in our water.