Water Quality Month – a closer look at how Maine Water provides drinking water all year long

SACO, ME, Aug. 4, 2025 — In a state like Maine, it’s easy to take water for granted. Despite the planet containing a seemingly abundance of water, only about 1 percent of all the water on Earth consists of fresh water available to drink. The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) designated August as Water Quality Month to raise awareness about the importance of water and to protect water sources.

At Maine Water, the most important thing we do each day is provide our customers with high-quality, reliable drinking water you can trust. Our dedicated team of trained water professionals accomplish this by protecting water sources, treating drinking water to meet health standards, testing throughout the delivery system to make sure we meet those standards and maintaining a delivery system capable of bringing that water right to your tap.

Water quality starts with the source. Maine Water owns, maintains and protects watershed land and the environment for current and future generations. About 93 percent of our water comes from surface water sources like a river or reservoir. The remaining 7 percent comes from groundwater wells. 

From the source, we operate and maintain our water system with dedicated employees, licensed in water treatment and distribution and available to meet our customers’ needs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Water flows through nearly 600 miles of pipe throughout distribution systems in 26 Maine communities. Maine Water set a goal of replacing 1 percent of our water mains each year. In 2024, Maine Water invested $14 million updating drinking water infrastructure with projects in 12 communities across the state to increase service reliability, improve flow for fire protection and maintain water quality for customers. 

Our teams continually monitor the quality of the water throughout the treatment process, testing water at the source, during and after the treatment process, and in the distribution system to verify the water continually meets all state and federal drinking water standards. We conduct more than 110,000 water quality tests each year on more than 120 water quality parameters.

You can view the testing results for your water system in our annual water quality reports. The reports also contain source water assessments done by the Maine Drinking Water program to gauge the susceptibility of water sources to potential contamination. 

You can view the water quality test results at www.mainewater.com/quality.