Biddeford and Saco Water Company

Biddeford and Saco Water Company is proud to present to you our annual water quality report. Over the years, we have dedicated ourselves to producing drinking water that meets or exceeds all statte and federal drinking water standards. We continually strive to adopt new and better methods of delivering the best quality drinking water to you. As regulation and drinking water standards change, it is our commitment to you to incorporate these standards system-wide in an expeditious and cost-effective manner. Whenever new challenges to drinking water safety emerge, we will be vigilant in maintaining our objective of providing quality drinking water at an affordable price. Should you have any health concerns relating to the information in this report, we encourage you to contact your health care provider.

This report outlines the process involved in delivering to you the highest quality drinking water available. In it, we will answer these important questions:

• Where does my water come from?
• Wat is in my drinking water?

We will also provide information on other available resources that will answer questions about water quality and health effects.

Community Participation

For more information about this report, or for any questions relating to your drinking water, please call Norm Lavigne, 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.

Water Source

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 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 an average of over five 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 the U.S. EPA's Locate Your Watershed ( http://cfpub.epa.gov/surf/huc.cfm?huc_code=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 Web site (www.srcc-maine.org), or by visiting our office.

How Your Water is 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.

In 1998, our Saco River treatment facility was among the first nationwide to be awarded the Director's Certificate by the Partnership for Safe Water in recognition of our exceptional water quality and facility operations. We have submitted our facility for peer review annually, and have been awarded the Director's Certificate each year since 1998!

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.

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.

Access to a reliable source of safe drinking water is critical to the lives and well- being of our customers. Accordingly, our system has been designed with emergencies in mind, and now includes duplicate processes, multiple water storage reservoirs, as well as established prcedures which can be quickly implemented to isolate sections of our water distribution system should the need arise. Also, we have mechanisms in place, including security, alarms, and water quality testing, designed to alert us of any changes or abnormal situations.

While a lot of our planning for emergencies began years ago, we have taken steps to increase security since September 11. All of our facilities are now kept locked down, and our employees are maintaining a heightened awareness, endeavoring to be ever vigilant for suspicious activity. Our emergency plans are regularly updated as necessary, and the need for additional security improvements is always being examined. We can also take some comfort in the nature and size of our Saco River source of supply. The water at our intakes is not static; rather it is in constant motion, with a minimum of 250 million gallons of water flowing past our plant intakes each day. It is unlikely that a contaminant could be added in sufficient quantity to render the water in the river at our intakes unsafe. Plus, before we pump any water into our distribution system, we pass it through a multi-step treatment process at our water treatment facility, which has been nationally recognized by the U.S. EPA sponsored Partnership for Safe Water for our optimization of the treatment process in use to provide microbial protection.

While we cannot possibly guarantee we are terrorist or disaster proff, we know that we have taken significant steps to ensure the safety and reliability of our operations. You can help too by being watchful, and immediately reporting to your local police all suspicious activities you might notice around any of our facilities.

Water Rates to Rise?

One of our continuing achievements in recent history is 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 both stable and far below the average paid by customers served by other water utilities in Maine for similar services.

Unfortunately, it appears like that our period of rate stability may soon come to an end. As we reported last year, we have seen large increases in the prices we have to pay for many essential services. Not surprisinly, the cost sectors where we have seen the biggest increases are for teh 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 recently mandated water quality monitoring programs, along with normal inflatinary increases we have seen in the cost of most everything else we require to operate, are making it quite like 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 late this year or early in 2003, which would be nearly nine years after our last increase.

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 at least small amounts of some of these substances. The presence of these substances does not necessarily indicate that water poses a health risk. However, to ensure that tap water is safe to drink, the U.S. EPA prescribes regulations limiting the amount of many of these substances in the water provided by public water systems. Similarly, U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations establish limits for contaminants in bottled water, which provide the same protection for public health.

Special Health Information

Some people may be more vulnerable to contaminants in drinking water than the general population. Immunocompromised people such as individuals with cancer undergoing chemotherapy, those who have undergone an organ transplant, have HIV/AIDS or other immune system disorder, and some elderly and very young can all be particularly at risk from infections and should seek advice about drinking water from their health care providers. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) guidelines on appropriate means to lessen the risk of infection by Cryptosporidium and other microbial contaminants are available from the Safe Drinking Water Hotline at (800) 426-4791.

Information on the Internet

The EPA Office of Water (www.epa.gov/watrhome) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (www.cdc.gov) Web sites provide a substantial amount of information on many issues relating to water resources, water conservation and public health. Also, the Maine Drinking Water Program has a Web site (www.state.me.us/dhs/eng/water) that provides complete and current information on water issues in our own state. Finally, we now have a Web site (www.biddefordsacowater.com) where you can learn more about both current operations and the history of our Company. If you do not have Internet access at home, remember that all public libraries in our service area offer free Internet access!