Spring is here and activity is picking up all around town. Here are a few notes on happenings around Adams Pond, our primary public water supply.

On May 6, a short-handed Boothbay Region Water District crew, with help from Desiree Scorcia and Ella, Lester, and Rod Spear, picked up about 1,000 pounds of trash from the Route 27 corridor along Adams Pond. The District’s trash load weighed just over 600 pounds and we estimate the Scorcia/Spear crew cleaned up another three to four hundred pounds more. Lester Spear reported that before they could retrieve their filled trash bags from the roadside, some good Samaritan had already taken them away. The largest item found was a bumper with head light assembly; the most numerous items were beverage containers of all kinds. Face masks were the newest form of roadside trash encountered and the most lucrative find was a water main leak.

Motor boats are prohibited from Adams Pond – or at least they are with one exception. The Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife has granted the Water District an exemption from the no motor prohibition to conduct water sampling. Up until now, the District has done all its sampling on Adams Pond from either a canoe or kayak. With our new 14’ Jon boat with 4-stroke engine, the District will now be able to conduct water quality sampling from a much more stable platform.

On Saturday May 15, an accident on Route 27 highlighted, again, our public water supply’s vulnerability. A car veered off Route 27 into the wooded buffer along Adams Pond, just north of the food truck site, crashed into a tree and burst into flames. Fortunately, the crash also severed the seasonal water line, which doused the flames until the fire department arrived. Luckily, no fuel or motor oil reached the pond.