Ellsworth did not meet the requirements for testing its public drinking water for lead and copper between January 2022 and December 2024, it said in a letter to water department customers earlier this month.
While the city did collect water samples twice during a recent three-year period, it was unable to get those samples formally tested for the metals, a city official said, in response to questions from the Bangor Daily News.
On one occasion, a box of water samples that the city had sent off for testing at a lab in Auburn were “squished causing the sample bottles to open,” said Reggie Winslow, the city’s water superintendent. More samples that were collected later in another attempt were delayed too long in getting to the same lab, and so were too old to test by the time they arrived, he said.
Because those issues prevented the city from testing for lead and copper in its drinking water, it sent out the notice to the water department customers and is getting its water tested again.
The testing, done at several sites around the city, is aimed at determining how much pipe corrosion in the system might be contributing to lead and copper levels in the water, given the health risks from consuming those metals.
In Ellsworth’s case, the city is not required to test for metals every year, and the recent snafus do not mean that there is anything wrong with the drinking water, according to Winslow.
The Maine Department of Health and Human Services issues testing requirements every year to public drinking water systems to ensure they’re meeting state and federal standards. The requirements vary from system to system.
In 2025, Ellsworth is required to test for coliform, nitrate, inorganics, fluoride and disinfection by-products, but not copper or lead, according to information on the website of the state drinking water program. Inspection requirements for earlier years were not available online.
Prior testing has consistently indicated that city water has lead and copper levels “below the standard reporting limits,” meaning that the city’s drinking “water quality, pH and corrosion control efforts are well beyond satisfactory,” Winslow said.
The U.S. banned the use of lead in water system upgrades decades ago, and more strict standards have been adopted in the past decade, but all drinking water systems still are required to test.
If the testing had previously identified higher levels of lead and copper in the city’s water, it would be required to test for those metals every year, Winslow said.
“This is excellent,” Winslow said of the department’s typical test results. “Because of this, the department is only required to test every three years.”
Residents who may be concerned about lead or copper in their private plumbing lines that connect to the city’s main lines can collect their own samples and send them off for testing at their own expense, he said. Home filtration systems, which range from whole-house systems to under-the-cabinet or even countertop models, also are an option, he said.
Winslow said the city is in the process of designing a new larger water treatment plant, which will help with increasing demand and will improve the system filtration capacity as it draws water from Branch Lake. Construction on the new $20 million treatment plant, which will be built next to the existing one on Clearwater Way, is expected to begin in the fall of 2026, Wilson said.
The plant upgrade is not expected to have any impacts on the metals testing program, he added.
“Ellsworth has never had an issue with lead and copper” in its water, Winslow said.
Correction: A previous headline on this story misstated the number of years in which Ellsworth couldn’t get samples of drinking water tested for lead.