New Water Man Comes Clean On "The Silent Service"

September 28, 2006
By Greta Sproul

            If bread is the staff of life, as ancient sages once proclaimed, then water
can surely be called nature's lifeblood. For Old Town's new water district
superintendent Frank Kearney Sr, water is not only one of nature's most basic
elements, but something worth getting passionate about.
            "It's what we put in our mouths," he says. "I'm passionate about water and
about my job as a whole. I want people to know what we do here. And it's not
just me. It's the eight other people who work for the Water District. "
            Kearney took over as Old Town water district superintendent last month, filling the slot left empty by the departure of nine-year department veteran Wes Haskell. It's the second water department position that Kearney has held. Before signing on for this job, he was the utility district superintendent in Mars Hill, managing water and wastewater operations. Before that, he did what a lot of people in the County do for a living---he grew potatoes.
            "I grew seed potatoes," he clarified. "That's a little different than other kinds of potato farming in that 90 percent of what I grew never went into anyone’s mouth. Because the potatoes I grew were used as the basis for crops of eating potatoes, they were subjected to an even higher standard than potatoes that are grown for eating. Sanitation and disease prevention were absolutely essential to (what I did).

            Kearney’s commitment to growing high quality seed potatoes led him to serve a three year stint as chairman of the Maine Seed Potato Board. He credits the stringent requirements he followed as a seed potato farmer with providing a basis for the high standards he currently applies to his new line of work. That new line of work could also be said to have had its "roots" in the potato business, in the sense that, like many potato farmers in the County, Kearney and his wife, Marsha, were victims of a shifting economy. After 23 years of working 400 acres of farmland, the couple decided that they’d toughed it out long enough and it was time to try something else. So they sold most of their farm and rented out the rest of it to a couple of neighbors. Then Kearney began what he calls "an accidental job" for the Mars Hill Utility District. It just came along unexpectedly, but at the right time.

            "I was on the town council for fifteen years," he says. "So I was familiar with the way the town and local utility were running. And farming had given me a background in the mixture of things that you need to know for a job like this. As a farmer, I had done everything that needed to be done, from the physical work to the bookkeeping. Farmers have to be jacks-of-all-trades. It felt like a natural transition.

            Kearney’s recent relocation to Old Town was a major one for a native of Aroostook County, but he says that both he and his wife are content with the move and feel that the area is in a good central location for visiting their families.

 "My first 50 years were in the County," Kearney laughed. "hopefully my next fifty will be here." Although he admits that he will always love Mars Hill, Kearney says that he is already beginning to feel at home in his newly adopted city. One of the things that Kearney likes most about working for the water district is that, unlike municipalities, water or utility districts are separate public entities not funded by taxes. Thus, they’re not affected by politics, which, Kearney says, allows him to focus exclusively on the work itself.

            Much of that work involves overseeing day-to-day operations at Old Town’s two well sites, which, between them, provide the city with its daily water supply. For some, the thought of a trip to Sibley Field on Bennoch Road might conjure up the dull image of a utility building in an otherwise empty field situated off a road outside the main area of the city. But a visit to Sibley Field with Kearney as tour guide takes on the excitement of a Discovery Channel espisode.

            "This used to be a gravel pit," he says, "and if it wasn’t for all of the gravel that was deposited here by glacial activity, we’d be sitting in a lake right now."

            Sibley Field is a "protected aquifer," Kearney explains, which means that it is a bowl-like area protected from the road by the banks of what used to be the gravel pit and the trees and a rise of bedrock that stand as a barrier along the outside of the banks. Sibley Field is home to one operating well that supplies 50 percent of the water that Old Town residents use in their homes. Water levels in the aquifer are constantly monitored for levels and flow directions. This data collected over time allows the best placement of future wells when they are needed.

            "We probably know more about this six acres of land right here than we do about any plot of land in town," Kearney says. "We know that it takes two to three weeks for the acquifer water to get from the (Stillwater) River to the well. We know that because, when it rains, it takes that long for the water to come up to the same level as the reading from the monitoring devices in the river."

            Of course the water that flows from Sibley Field into Old Town’s public and residential faucets has to be purified first, and, here, Kearney is glad for the same stringent standards that he once used in seed potato farming. City water standards are regulated by the EPA for health reasons, but in the case of Sibley Field, the purification process is concerned more with "aesthetic issues."

            "The water here is filtered to remove manganese and iron which are not a hazard to health, but can give the water an unappealing taste," Kearney says. "They’re what EPA calls “secondary standards” for these aesthetic contaminants. What we do, basically, is disinfect our water, using sodium hypochlorite or bleach, but a much stronger version than the Clorox that you would use at home. The increased strength helps to stabilize and enhance the filtration process. We also add Sodium Carbonate, a chemical which slightly raises the PH. This assures that our water will not cause significant pipe corrosion all the way to the customer's faucet. Flouride is added also at about 1 part per million to enhance dental health." "It may sound complicated," says Kearney, " but as a matter of fact the process is standard for most groundwater found in this area. The fact that we carry the process on without interruption 24 hours a day, 7 days a week makes it more of a marvel, and thats where dedicated employees become our most important asset.

            But even a hard-working well site like Sibley Field can’t service Old Town all by itself. The former gravel pit has several other partners in the water district, namely the Spring Street treatment plant and it's nearby Spring Street aquifer, and the three standpipes on Jefferson Street, the highest point in the city. One of the three standpipes was contributed by the Penobscot Indian Nation, which also gets its water from Old Town but whose geographical elevation doesn’t allow for the installation of a standpipe on its own land. Each standpipe is cleaned every three years on a rotating basis, Kearney says. The job gives a new slant to the term "professional cleaning" as well, requiring the cleaners to don deep-sea diving suits before descending to the depths of the standpipe interiors. In the case of the first and oldest standpipe, that’s 1.2 million gallons worth of water through which they have to work their way back up again.

            Still, despite his passion and commitment to the everyday mechanics of supervising the city’s water district, Kearney has his eye on the big picture, too. More than anything else, he sees himself as a member of a team that includes eight other people whose names he makes a point of mentioning for posterity. He goes on to say that he and his co-workers have their own term for what the rest of us call "water". To them, it’s "the silent service," a name that captures perfectly its essential and, for some, an unappreciated contribution to our everyday lives.