Fresh water has always seemed inexhaustible in Maine, a state with thousands of lakes, hundreds of miles of rivers and groundwater good enough to market in bottles all over the world. There’s plenty of evidence, however, that even in this water-rich region we’re facing some limits. This month we report on the frustrations of homeowners in the Town Hill area of Bar Harbor who are finding their wells inadequate — and who are questioning the wisdom of building more homes in subdivisions there. Granted, Mount Desert’s geology is different from that of other places and it doesn’t draw public water from underground aquifers, but the concerns of the homeowners about their private wells are worth paying attention to.
“Well water has become a contentious issue on Mount Desert,” reports writer Craig Idlebrook. “Town and neighborhood water meetings can draw 40 to 50 people. Disputes have grown heated, pitting residents against developers.”
Towns say they lack up-to-date tools to deal with the problem. Ordinances and town plans, some of them out of date, don’t always account for growing demand on groundwater, and the recommendations of at least one study on Mount Desert several years ago haven’t yet been implemented because of other priorities.
Bar Harbor, of course, is only one town along the coast with a water problem. Residents of islands further offshore have been dealing with variations on the same problem for decades: more development, more wells, a dropping water table, salt water intrusion, pollution of a sole-source aquifer. The point is that water, like lots of things in our biosphere, comes in limited quantities. Now the limits are beginning to show.