From taking sponge baths to filling watering cans for the garden with frog ponds, some coastal Mainers are taking extreme measures to conserve well water during the drought.
They hope that curtailing usage will help their wells from going dry, but they fear it’s not a sure thing. Mainers can be pretty good at making do when times get tough — but doing without water is just plain hard.
Nick McCrea of Yarmouth knows that firsthand. Last weekend, the dug well at his house went dry, burning out the well pump and leaving him and his partner scrambling. A crew came by and replaced the pump — a $1,500 hit — and they’ve been conserving water assiduously ever since to let the well fill back up again.
“I think we overestimated the water supply in the well. It was sort of a perfect storm of the drought and not paying enough attention,” McCrea said. “We had about a week of taking sponge baths at the sink and feeling sorry for ourselves.”
Much of the southern half of the state is contending with abnormally dry, moderate or severe drought conditions, according to the most recent update from the U.S. Drought Monitor. But the Maine coast from Belfast south to New Hampshire is the most parched, grappling with impacts that include poor water quality and declining groundwater.
The drought has kept Randy Marquis, the owner of Marquis Well & Pump in Sanford, very busy. He and his three-person crew have been working 12-hour days almost every day, and they’ve been doing that for months. They work mostly in York and Cumberland counties, the state’s two most populous, both of which are partially experiencing severe drought conditions.
“It’s been crazy,” he said. “The drought’s just been blowing up my phone. It’s been pretty bad. We’re noticing a massive amount of wells going dry.”
Most of the wells that have been drying up are dug wells, but they are seeing that some drilled wells, which are deeper, have been starting to show signs of trouble. Between dry wells and the housing boom, which has led to more people building houses and needing new wells to be dug, Marquis is pretty much booked solid to the end of the year.
“We started this year not getting enough rainfall to bounce back from the drought of last year,” he said. “You don’t know what the next year will bring.”
Patty Pendergast of Thorndike, whose property is in moderate drought, hopes heavier rains will return, though she’s not counting on it. She keeps goats and generally has a big garden on her property, though not this year. Next year, she’s planning to make changes that should provide more resiliency, in case dry conditions persist.
“Drought has been something in central Maine that has become more and more common,” she said. “I’m going to mulch like a crazy person next year. I think that’s going to be the only way I keep a lot of things alive.”
This summer, Pendergast has noticed that the fire pond across the street looks like it’s getting pretty low, and has seen a decrease in the quality of her own well water.
“I’ve been getting a few little bits of dirt and tiny pebbles when I fill buckets for the goats,” she said.
So she’s taking steps to save water that include quick showers only once a week and doing sponge baths the rest of the time. She used to bring her goats full buckets of water that they never finished, and then dumped the rest out onto the ground. Now, they get half buckets, and what they don’t drink she brings to her lilac bushes.
“I think it’s something that we have to do,” she said.
In Northport, Judy Berk and David Foley also are conserving water as much as they can in order to make sure there’s enough for the two of them, their cats and their flock of 30 chickens along with a giant garden.
Foley, who’s handy, has figured out a way to use a 12-volt pump and a battery to pull “very mucky” water out of a little frog pond to water the garden.
“It’s very ‘Red Green,’” he said, referring to the Canadian sketch comedy show about a die-hard do-it-yourselfer. “And frog poop is really good fertilizer.”
They’ve also been doing laundry at the laundromat, collecting rain water — when it falls — in large tubs placed under the drip lines of the house, and being very thoughtful around bathing.
“David has been showering outside with various jury-rigged showers,” Berk said, adding that she takes quick indoor showers that use only a few gallons of water.
At their house, they have instituted the rule that guys pee outside.
It’s all to protect a commodity that has become more and more precious: water.
“We fear the well will run dry,” Berk said. “It has run dry before in the past.”
Foley said that the exercise in conservation has made them think about water differently than they did before.
“We think that everything coming into the house has to be of drinking quality, and we think that everything leaving the house has to go into a septic system or sewer, like it’s contaminated,” he said. “That’s not true. We’ve got to start thinking of the multiple uses we have for water, and differentiate them.”
