Eagle Lake + Building Infrastructure: A view of drinking water quality across COA Campus

Moran, Ludwin; Hall, Sarah; Disney, Jane

From the abstract: "Acadia National Park’s Eagle Lake provides the daily drinking water for residents of the town of Bar Harbor and millions of visitors annually. The surface water from Eagle Lake is an excellent elevated (~283’ a.m.s.l) water source that is low in turbidity and biological activity, and heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants are not a concern. However, residential drinking water quality also depends on characteristics acquired due to encounters with infrastructure such as piping or taps. For example, lead and copper are metals known to leach from household pipes. Eagle Lake is the source of the water flowing through College of the Atlantic (COA) campus taps. A first draw test was conducted at COA to determine the chemistry of the drinking water in different buildings and taps throughout campus. We also compared hot water vs cold water and filtered water from a dispense to that of kitchen and bathroom taps. While lead concentrations are below the federal MCL of 15 ppb in all campus taps, three taps yield water above the 4 ppb target set by LD153 for Maine K-12 schools. We find water dispensers regularly yield lower levels of all analytes. Similar to other studies, we find that after running the water for 5 minutes, levels of many analytes tend to decrease for taps and remain consistently low for water dispensers. While the the Eagle Lake water is a high quality drinking water source, given the number of older buildings in the town of Bar Harbor and the presumably large population of tourist and residents drinking first-draw tap water regularly, we suggest home and business owners test their household water for lead and consider filtration options if necessary."