Microsoft Word - Final Annual Report 2019.docx

ANNUAL REPORT 2018-19

Water Department We started off the year investigating a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) to extend our main on Poland Corner Road to the Northern Springs Trailer park. This would include about two thousand feet of pipe, two fire hydrants and an underground storage tank. We finally received word that we did in fact receive that grant. We spent the rest of the year engineering the project and gathering data. Since the building of the high school we have had permission to serve parts of the town of Poland. A few years ago there was a main laid down past the Poland Town office to the area of the RSU #16 offices. This expanded our service area and gained us some good customers. We now serve a few municipal building and schools that require sprinklers. The new Hannaford’s building is now on line. They too have a sprinkler service along with a domestic service. We also picked up four new house services. Our system is growing!! Every three years the State Drinking Water Program reviews us. It’s called a Sanitary Survey. I’m pleased to report that we only had two minor discrepancies to correct. One was a book keeping issue, and the other was a plumbing correction at the pumping station. The State had to replace the big culvert on South Main Street near Riverside Drive this year. Our transmission main just upstream from their pipe. We did our best to locate our pipe and the State managed to avoid any conflicts with us. This could have been a very disruptive problem for our system. Oh, yes, the mill fire. Around 2007 we replaced our old steel standpipe with two underground reservoirs. This doubled our storage capacity to around a half a million gallons. The fire departments hooked onto our system using the fire hydrants in the area. It was quickly apparent that we couldn’t keep up with the demand they were putting on our system. The fire department is cognizant of our system. They had already started drafting from the river taking the pressure off of our system. At the rate they were drawing water from our system we were about two hours from draining our reservoirs. This would have been devastating for our system and greatly hampered the fire fighting efforts. Their actions at this fire were very commendable. Every year I write about the cooperation between the Water Department, Highway Department, and the Sanitary District. We are small crews and when we need help it’s nice to know that we can depend on each other for support. This was a dry season. Because of this we sold extra water. Back yard pools are on the rise.

Respectfully, Stephen French, Superintendent.

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