CASTINE, Maine — Because the community is consuming more water than its water department can provide, town officials are buying water from the nearby town of Bucksport.
Castine Town Manager Jimmy Goodson said Wednesday that the town began buying Bucksport water on Monday and has been infusing about 24,000 gallons a day into its water system since then.
“This sounds like something they’re doing in California, not Castine, Maine,” Goodson said.
The town manager explained Wednesday that the shortage is due to recent drought conditions and the increasing demand for water caused by an influx of 980 students starting classes at Maine Maritime Academy while Castine’s summer residents are still in town. Castine’s water demand goes from about 65,000 gallons a day to about 90,000 gallons a day at this time of year, Goodson said.
“It’s kind of a seasonal thing to some degree every year, but this year for a number of reasons, the drought being the primary one, it’s happening earlier in the dry season,” he said.
Castine’s public water supply comes from three wells in an aquifer that has island-like geology in that it is a bubble of fresh water surrounded by salt water, Goodson said.
“So as long as it rains and the fissures in our rock collect the rainwater, it makes our bubble bigger,” he said. “Since we haven’t had much rain, our bubble is shrinking. And we really want to avoid sucking seawater into our wells, so we monitor that daily.”
Goodson said the town’s selectmen decided that, while there wasn’t a crisis situation, it would be prudent to supplement the local water supply.
David Michaud, manager of the Maine Water Co. treatment plant in Bucksport, said the water is being sent to Castine in trucks.
Maine Water Customer Service Manager Pamela Blackman pegged the cost of water shipments at about $100 a day.
Goodson said the water importing arrangement with Bucksport has been a longstanding part of Castine’s emergency plan. But he said it’s been at least a decade, possibly two decades, since the town last needed to buy water.
One recent step the town has taken to conserve water has involved replacing the restrooms at the town dock with portable toilets, Goodson noted in an Aug. 24 memo to Castine Water Department customers about the current situation.
He also passed along some water-saving tips to customers from residents Ingrid and Doug Scott.
— “If it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down. Urine is a sterile liquid and the toilet is not there for the purpose of Fido getting a drink or Junior floating his rubber ducky,” the couple said.
— Wash dishes by hand and capture the rinse water into plastic jugs that can be dumped into the toilet tank for flushing.
— Install a low-flow showerhead and take “Navy” showers — “Wet down, water off, soap down, water on to rinse,” they suggested.
— Set up cascading plastic water barrels to capture water from gutters and use it to water gardens and flower beds and to flush toilets.