Are We Heading For A Substantial Drought?
Many Residents Concerned, but It's Too Early to Tell
BAR HARBOR—Rain was drifting down on Friday, but plenty of Mount Desert Island residents have been talking and wondering about the low water levels that they are seeing on the island.
According to WGME meteorologist Emily Santom, “About 70% of Maine is currently seeing drought conditions. Maine saw its first signs of abnormally dry conditions on August 13, 2024.”
However, rain is expected to be on its way. Rain is expected on Mount Desert Island today and Saturday, with possibilities of up to an inch of precipitation falling over the two days.
The U.S. Drought Monitor, Thursday afternoon, placed Hancock County in a moderate drought. While different areas experience droughts in different ways, typically in Maine, the site explains, impacts of a moderate drought include: “honey production declines; irrigation use increases; hay and grain yields are lower than normal; trees and landscaping are stressed; fish are stressed; voluntary water conservation is requested; reservoir and lake levels are below normal capacity; wildfires and ground fires increase.”
The Maine Emergency Management Service (MEMA) has a site for reporting dry wells. There are six wells reportedly dry in Hancock County and one on Mount Desert Island. According to MEMA, “Some of the most severe droughts happened in the late 1940s, mid-1960s and more recently during the 2001-2003 period.” During that drought, “Maine farmers lost over $32 million dollars,” the site says.
EAGLE LAKE AND OTHER TOWN WATER SUPPLIES
At both Tuesday night’s Bar Harbor Town Council meeting and Wednesday night’s Bar Harbor Comprehensive Plan informational session, attendees expressed concerns not only for private water wells but also the receding water levels in Bar Harbor’s water supply, Eagle Lake.
Eagle Lake is part of Acadia National Park. The park and the Town of Bar Harbor have memorandums of agreement regarding the use of the lake as the town’s public water supply. The use of the lake as the town’s water supply supersedes the existence of the park.
The lake is part of the natural resources managed by the park, and the water levels in Eagle Lake and many other bodies of water managed by the park are measured on an almost weekly basis during ice out season.
The water level in Eagle Lake is measured via one of two benchmarks which are holes that have been drilled into a large boulder and a piece of ledge. A leveling device is placed into the hole and the staff measures down to the water level to get the measurement.
According to Acadia National Park Air and Water Program Manager Bill Gawley, they have not been able to measure the water level in Eagle Lake for almost the past two months because “since, I want to say the end of September, the benchmark in Eagle Lake has been high and dry.”
Like anything else in the park, bodies of water are a natural resource that is to be interfered with as little as possible by human influence so nature can continue to run its course. However, when given the opportunity, the park does take measures for improvements.
According to Acadia National Park Management Assistant John Kelly, the old maintenance building at the park’s headquarters used to be situated in the watershed for Eagle Lake. Now that they are building a new maintenance building, they have moved it and situated it so that it no longer impedes on the watershed.
As far as droughts and dropping water levels in bodies of water, they are all natural and cyclical events that the park measures and collects data on but does not interfere with. Water usage by towns under existing agreements with the park from these bodies of water is regulated by the towns and the state, and the park has no say in the matter other than what may be in the MOAs.
OTHER MDI WATER SUPPLIES
Gawley said that all of the larger bodies of water in the park are in similar situations as Eagle Lake, in relation to water level drop. Of course, there are many variables that affect each body of water such as how many springs feed it or how big it is, because the larger the surface area, the faster the evaporation, so there is a bit of variance.
Bubble Pond, which feeds into Eagle Lake, Jordan Pond (which is the water supply for Seal Harbor), Upper and Lower Hadlock Ponds (which are the water supply for Northeast Harbor), and Long Pond (which is the water supply for Southwest Harbor) are all protected bodies of water and all are experiencing the same water level drops.
PRIVATE WELLS
Private water wells are much more affected by ground water, which is actually subsurface water rather than bodies of water that collect above the surface, especially in a less sandy and more ledge dominated environment such as ours. According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), “ground water is simply the subsurface water that fully saturates pores or cracks in soils and rocks.”
“Ground water is replenished by precipitation and, depending on the local climate and geology, is unevenly distributed in both quantity and quality. When rain falls or snow melts, some of the water evaporates, some is transpired by plants, some flows overland and collects in streams, and some infiltrates into the pores or cracks of the soil and rocks. The first water that enters the soil replaces water that has been evaporated or used by plants during a preceding dry period. Between the land surface and the aquifer water is a zone that hydrologists call the unsaturated zone. In this unsaturated zone, there usually is at least a little water, mostly in smaller openings of the soil and rock; the larger openings usually contain air instead of water,” says the USGS.
Given the small amount of rain received lately, the rain forecast for the next two days will likely do very little to replenish local aquifers.
MAINE’S MOST DAMAGING DROUGHT
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) says that “in 1999–2002, Maine experienced its most damaging drought to date. In the nine months leading up to April 2002, an estimated 17,000 private wells ran dry, and farmers lost more than $32 million in crop yield between 2001 and 2002.”
According to Gawley and records kept by Acadia National Park, in 2001 MDI had a total of 25.5 inches of rain for the year. To date, not including today’s rain, MDI has had 39.61 inches of rain this year. In 2023 MDI had 60.8 inches of rain through November 21.
In addition, according to NIDIS, “Maine has also begun to experience snow drought—periods of abnormally thin snowpack that may occur due to a complete lack of precipitation, or an occurrence of winter rains that do not contribute, and may even reduce, total snowpack. As winter temperatures generally continue to increase in Maine, winters become shorter, total snowpack may decrease, and spring runoff important for groundwater recharge may diminish, leading to more potential challenges with drought through the summer.”
The Bar Harbor Story has reached out to Bar Harbor Director of Public Works Bethany Leavitt seeking direction on who to speak with regarding the town’s water supply and any potential concerns but has not received a response as of publication. We will update this story as soon as we can.
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Wow - this is a great article- so much great information. I was just wondering this weekend when riding by Bubble lake and seeing the public water supply signs again as to whose supply it was. I had not realized it connected to Eagle Lake. This is one of those articles that should be sent out every year.