Each year, Maine Rural Water Association (MRWA) recognizes one water district in the state for its outstanding water operations. At the 35th Annual MRWA Conference in Bangor on December 8, the Boothbay Region Water District received the 2015 top water system honors.

In presenting the award, Alex Wong noted the local water district’s “excellent work with the complexity of their distribution system, their work in source protection, and their leadership in the industry.”

“This year’s award goes to a system that is really two systems. With 67 percent of its customers being seasonal, this system has to essentially shut down half of its operations in the winter. As you can imagine, this puts an incredible physical strain on their infrastructure,” Wong said.  

“This system has just completed a $3.4 million project, which included installing two miles of new C-900 plastic main, 30 new services, a 500,000 gallon pre-stressed concrete tank, and $80,000 in Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system upgrades in key positions to better monitor the system. In addition, every year they have to shut off and pull the meters to 2,221 services. They do this in one month ... whoa ... that’s like 70 meters per day ... wow.  And they get this done with two treatment operators, six distribution crew, one office staff, and one general manager.

District Manager Jon Ziegra, who also received a leadership award at the conference, said the water district was excited about the honor.

“The review panel took into consideration all the capital improvement projects we’ve done, as well as the seasonality of our water supply, and the amount and quality of our operations. It is basically a measure of our productivity and quality,” Ziegra said.

“We are leading in a lot of really key areas - in water protection, water treatment and distribution, as well as dealing with a seasonal system. We did a ton of construction this year. And all of this work has been done in a really cost effective manner.” 

Ziegra said what makes this award exceptionally meaningful is its source.

“There are a lot of really good water districts in this state. I’m really psyched to be recognized by our peers.”