Approximately 40 water systems that provide drinking water across Maine will be at risk of violating new limits on “permanent chemicals” if the state begins enforcing updated rules on toxic substances today, a sign of how much work remains to meet the new requirements.
As of 2025, 44 public water systems had wells that tested above at least one of the state’s strict standards for chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, according to a state data set. The system includes 15 schools, about a dozen mobile home parks, and five water districts from across Maine, which together provide regular drinking water to more than 25,000 people, the analysis said. main monitor showed.
According to the new rules, systems could be subject to fines and other enforcement actions from the Maine Department of Health and Human Services if they do not reduce their quarterly average PFAS levels by April 2029. The stricter limits are effectively one-fifth of the previous limits and apply primarily to individual PFAS compounds rather than totals.
How communities succeed in reducing PFAS to microscopic levels may be a question of how much public funding is available to plan, purchase, and install filtration systems in time. And once treatment occurs, schools, water districts, and communities must budget for its upkeep.
Large utilities like the Sanford Water District already have qualified technicians on their payroll, so this isn’t too difficult, but other facilities say it’s a challenge.
“I think (Maine’s) biggest challenge isn’t really a system like ours or Augusta’s,” Parent said. “We’re dealing with very high-level schools and trying to make sure we have maintenance staff. They’re doing more than just providing drinking water.”
Some schools and water systems that tested for elevated PFAS levels in 2025 saw concentrations fall to undetectable levels in 2026, while others did not.
For example, Holden Elementary School last November tested at a state-regulated concentration of 1 part in 20.2 trillion for PFAS, which is just above Maine’s interim limit of 20 parts in trillion. After two months, the chemicals were no longer detectable.
Meanwhile, Lake District High School in Naples tested for a concentration of about 1 in 28 trillion last December and tested again a month later.
The state has distributed about $40 million in grants since 2022 to help at least a dozen schools and communities install PFAS treatment facilities or connect to new water sources to reduce concentrations, according to the Maine Department of Health and Human Services grants database.
Four years later, some large PFAS projects like Sanford are still in the planning or construction stages. Budgeting the time and resources needed to install a PFAS system is a balancing act for Sanford as it juggles existing maintenance plans.
Even the district’s $10 million grant for PFAS filtration is limited, Parent said, given Sanford’s pre-planned project to replace aging or leaking water mains. Sanford’s proposed two treatment facilities would cost $25 million and cost more than $200,000 a year to operate, with the first facility expected to be operational in 2029. (Sanford has two wells with total regulated compound concentrations hovering around the state’s new PFAS standards of 13.32 and 11.75 ppas as of early March. The second well may be decommissioned without being renovated.) A filtration system, Parent said. )
The parent company said the loans and settlements the district may receive from lawsuits against PFAS manufacturers will balance the initial operating costs of the first facility and ease the burden on ratepayers. But in a few years, when the loan is due and a second facility could come online, costs will likely jump. As a result, the Sanford Water District is now beginning a gradual 1.5% annual rate increase, Parent said.
“That way, when this big new debt service comes along and[the new policies]start hitting us in earnest, we won’t have anything to make up for,” Parent said.
One of the major grants Sanford received is funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act of 2021 and administered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which allocates funds to states for water filtration projects in small or disadvantaged communities.
Sanford and four other Maine water districts are scheduled to receive $7.4 million in grant funding in 2026, according to Maine’s project list. The Congressional funding behind this grant is scheduled to expire after the end of the fiscal year in June, so Maine’s future PFAS filtration systems may need a new major source of funding.
And aside from the 44 water systems in Maine that tested above the more stringent standards in 2025, even more could exceed the standards if a new deadline to tighten statewide PFAS monitoring begins next April and systems are required to start testing more regularly.
As their name suggests, PFAS are persistent and difficult to break down, so they accumulate in the environment and in humans over time. Peer-reviewed studies have linked PFAS exposure to a variety of health conditions, including kidney and testicular cancer, suppressed immune responses, developmental delays in children, and increased blood pressure in pregnant women.
Its widespread presence stems from a wide range of industrial and consumer products, including nonstick cookware and packaging, first developed more than 75 years ago by manufacturers such as 3M and DuPont.
PFAS are also found in human waste, which seeps into groundwater and wells across Maine after the contaminated sludge was sprayed on local fields as a type of fertilizer for years.
Nathan Saunders, an environmental engineer and Fairfield resident, is analyzing data from a former state program that allowed the release of PFAS-containing sewage sludge. The amount of sludge applied by the Kennebec Sanitation District in Fairfield alone contained enough PFAS to contaminate New York City’s annual drinking water supply for four years, according to an analysis of recent soil samples and recorded sludge deposits. (His analysis has not been peer-reviewed.)
The findings show drinking water contamination is likely to continue in Fairfield and other sludge hotspots unless intentional steps are taken to remove PFAS-contaminated soil, Sanders said.
“The potential for contamination is huge,” Sanders said.. “Unless the water comes down and dissolves the PFAS that’s on top of all these fields, we’re not going to get any PFAS into our wells.”
Sanders said the water in his well consistently tests hundreds of times higher than the state’s previous, more lenient PFAS limits, which spike during periods of high rainfall and decline during droughts.
He and about 500 other Maine residents individually installed and maintain PFAS filtration systems through funds from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. There was $16.5 million left in the fund as of last year, and the department predicts it will soon run out of money needed to install additional filtration systems or maintain existing filtration systems.
Meanwhile, sludge-soaked fields seeping into the water table risks contaminating additional wells, Sanders said. The cost alone to replace one of his well’s PFAS filters was $2,000. Without state funding, Sanders will be left to foot the bill.
“A lot of people are going to have a hard time maintaining this kind of expensive system,” he said.
Public water systems face similar potential funding shortfalls, said Roger Krause, general manager of the Kennebec Water District in Waterville and president of the Maine Water Utilities Association.
“Maine is fortunate to have federal funding available” for PFAS treatment, Clouse said. “That money is essentially gone.”
Like Sanford, the Kennebec Water District also received a grant to build a PFAS filtration system, with construction expected to begin next year. Most of the project’s estimated $8 million price tag will come from grants, with the remainder coming from PFAS lawsuit settlements and loans, Kroes said.
Based on current federal funding projections, Krause predicted that if funding dries up and system maintenance costs skyrocket, districts will be left to foot the bill.
The state Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to questions. monitor As to whether additional grants may be available. There are also smaller state grants and loans, but they are not as large as the PFAS grants.
“Additional PFAS funding from Congress seems unlikely,” Kraus said. “Once the 2026 cycle ends, we will all have to get ourselves PFAS treatments.”
Both Kraus and Parent said the district has taken proactive measures to protect against future PFAS contamination, which is commonly caused by stormwater runoff and fluctuations in the ground water table, but the risks still remain. Spreading of sludge has been documented on land near the boundaries of the water district’s watershed.
This has not caused a spike in PFAS concentrations in China Lake or the wider watershed that the district draws from, Kroes said. He said the district is doing everything it can to reduce potential PFAS spikes, such as maintaining forested buffers around watersheds, but it’s impossible to plan for chemical residue.
“This is an amorphous contaminant, it’s diverse, and it’s at incredibly low levels, so it’s very difficult to predict whether we’ll be able to prevent new PFAS contamination,” Kraus said. “While it seems unlikely that new PFAS contamination will occur within the watershed, we cannot predict too far into the future.”
As it turns out, Maine’s water districts become downstream victims of PFAS. Their lawsuit against PFAS manufacturers, including 3M, DuPont, Tyco, and BASF, seeks to compensate them and their ratepayers for the costs they incur to filter PFAS from drinking water.
Parent emphasized that as Maine continues to address consumer products that contribute to PFAS contamination, we must not lose sight of the root causes.
“We are not the source of that information,” Parent said. “We are the unwilling recipients.”
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