The Wareham Fire District's drinking-water supply meets or exceeds all drinking-water standards, according to the results of the district's Annual Wellhead Protection Monitoring Program.

The results of the program will be presented by the district Water Commissioners and SEA Consultants (SEA) at a public meeting on Monday, October 18 at the Water Department Office.

The district spends approximately $50,000 per year on voluntary tests related to ensuring the quality of the aquifer and has run over 2,800 analytical tests of its groundwater supply for both regulated and unregulated contaminates since 2001.

The District, in cooperation with A.D. Makepeace Company, has installed a series of 13 monitoring wells around three well fields, all located north of I-495 between Charge Pond and Glen Charlie Roads.  Samples are taken twice a year from both the production and monitoring well sites.

Over nine years of sampling, several compounds have been detected at trace or very low levels in some of the wells.

"Technology has improved our ability to detect contaminants down to fractions of parts per billion", said Michael Martin, Superintendent for the Wareham Water Department, in a press release.  "At the levels reported, these compounds do not represent any threat to the water supply."

The sources of the compounds are related to existing residential and agricultural land uses, and, in some cases, are naturally occurring in the environment.  Of the eight compounds that have been detected, only three - MTBE, nitrates, and chloroform - are regulated at the state and federal level.  Levels of these three compounds are well below drinking water standards.

In 2009, the District petitioned the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, Office of Research and Standards (MassDEP ORS) to prepare health guidance values for pesticides detected in Wareham's water supply.  This state agency has determined that all of the pesticide results reported are below health protective guidance values and pose no unacceptable health risk to water customers.