Our Watershed!

Water in Maine

Maine's water quality has improved markedly over the last 30 years. Guided by the Clean Water Act's goal of making all waters "fishable and swimmable," Maine has enacted laws and policies that prohibit discharge of raw sewage into rivers, reduce toxic pollution, and help maintain high-quality waters. The state recently recommended upgrades under the Water Classification System to provide additional protection for 700 miles of rivers and 16 square miles of coastal waters (pending legislative approval). Despite these advances, there are still many problems that plague Maine's waterways.

Our Watershed: The Lower Kennebec!

There are 61 rivers and streams and 379 lakes and ponds in our watershed.

Our watershed has a EPA score of 3 which indicates Less Serious Water Quality Problems - Low Vulnerability to stressors such as pollutant loadings. However, there are toxic releasers in our area, they just are not high enough to qualify the entire watershed as having water quality problems.

Some of these are:

the Chinet Factory in Waterville

4 Dexter Shoe Plants in Dexter, Newport, and Skowhegan and countless other shoe company factories in almost every town

Kimberly Clark Tissue Company in Winslow, releasing sulfuric acid.

3 Paper Mills in Kingsfield, Skowhegan, and Madison. Paper mills release chlorine, formaldihide, barium compounds, methanol, and sulfuric acid.

Laurel Plastics in Madison. Plastic is a derivation of petroleum, so there are emissions concerns with this.

for more on our watershed, go to: http://www.epa.gov/students/surf_your_watershed.htm and type in 04901 for our zipcode and pull up tons of info on the Lower Kennebec!