Days before winter break ended in December 2022, Bill Hansen was relieved to learn that Jordan-Small Middle School in Raymond had no traces of ‘forever chemicals’ in tests of the school’s water system.
Hansen, the Windham Raymond School District’s facilities director, was on vacation in Rockland at the time, visiting venues for his daughter’s wedding, asHe initially thought if Jordan-Small was in the clear, then so was Raymond Elementary, just down the road. It was a promising start for the district east of Sebago Lake and its six schools.But a couple of days later, on Dec. 30, Hansen received a bombshell.
DHHS, tasked with distributing funds to public water systems for PFAS filtration, doesn’t expect to have enough funds to help all the state’s public water systems meet the new federal standards, according to Lindsay Hammes, an agency spokesperson. “I think news putting out that information made it so people were somewhat aware that there’s potential for schools to have in their system,” Peavey said.
In the background, Hansen, Superintendent Howell and other district officials worked to acquire federal money from the Small Public Water System Emerging Contaminant Grant, funding managed at the state level by DHHS’s Drinking Water Program, and made available to schools and smaller water systems. Hansen only had flimsy guesses where the school’s high levels — 950 parts per trillion — originated. Officials with other districts afflicted by PFAS contaminations were similarly perplexed by their origins, which complicated how they came up with solutions.
PFAS filtration systems have cost around $50,000 for smaller schools, but Raymond’s new system won’t require the routine maintenance and upkeep required of PFAS filtration systems.The paths for some other school districts have not been as straightforward.
After a year undergoing the planning process for that system, Ross said the Drinking Water Program changed its tune and allowed the district to pursue a cheaper solution from a different company, which would cut the cost to around $60,000 per school. The entire project would be funded by the grant. In the meantime, the district has been paying around $1,000 per month to purchase bottled water from Poland Spring and is back to square one in planning for the PFAS filtration systems. The Brooklin and Deer Isle-Stonington school boards only recently received initial quotes for the new systems, which they are comparing before selecting a contractor.
“I think that the concern is if they drill another well, it may not have any productivity and it also may still have PFAS in it,” Hafford said, as well as the elevated levels of radon that accompany granite. By the Canadian border in Hodgdon, the town’s high school and elementary school are also looking at August completion dates after more than a year and a half on bottled water. Hodgdon’s district, Maine School Administrative District 70, received $60,000 for each school to install granular activated carbon filtration systems, according to Superintendent Tyler Putnam.
Schools and other public water systems are also required to test quarterly for PFAS, Faessler said, so the odds a breakthrough would go unnoticed is unlikely. “We weren’t putting the water in the system anyway, but then we got this hit of PFAS that was fairly high,” Parent told The Monitor. “We thought, ‘Oh boy, what is this?’”
Maine School Administrative District 6, encompassing Buxton, Standish and parts of both York and Cumberland counties, was one of the first school districts in the state to test for PFAS after the legislature’s 2021 law passed. Altogether, planning and installation costs for all five schools’ filtration systems totaled around $700,000, far more than the other districts, though MSAD 6 is one of the largest in the state.
The FLUORO-SORB systems have been in place at two of the schools for almost a year, and Thibodeau said the district hasn’t had any problems. With a carbon system, the schools’ relatively high PFAS levels may have clogged up the filters by now, requiring replacement and disposal. Parent, specifically, questioned whether the state’s regulatory approach for public water systems like his was the most effective.
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