How lucky we all are this time of year to live in this beautiful state. The bold crimsons and lustrous goldens brighten roadsides and cityscapes, but are particularly radiant when draped over a crisp, clear lake. Sebago Lake is especially picturesque this time of year, and reflects clean simplicity.
Nearly 200,000 Mainers drink from Sebago Lake and that’s just counting the humans. The Sebago watershed encompasses 30,000 acres, stretching from Bethel to Standish, and includes parts of 24 towns. At 316 ft deep and holding nearly a trillion tons of water, Maine’s second largest lake is a precious resource. Sebago is one of the cleanest lakes in the country; so clean it’s exempt from the expensive filtration processes that most public water sources are subject to, keeping wallets full and residents healthy.
The Portland Water District (PWD) has worked with residents of the watershed for nearly a century to maintain the high quality of Sebago’s water. Today, PWD manages 10 monitoring programs to enable the district to protect the health of the watershed. The Tributary Biological Monitoring examines life cycles of insects around the lake to ensure that the overall ecosystem is healthy. Problems with insect life cycles can act as a biological “early warning system” and allow PWD to identify and correct conditions that might otherwise threaten the lake. Regular measurements of dissolved oxygen, bacteria, conductivity, and transparency, confirm that Sebago’s water quality is excellent. But you don’t have to be a scientist to know the lake water is clear; even through 30 feet of water, the lake bottom is clearly visible to those that peer into the depths.
Rest assured Portland, not only does your drinking water start out pristine, but it is also disinfected with a process using ozone that is 99.99 percent effective against viruses and Giardia, and fluorinated for dental health. When I’m on campus, I know that I’m perfectly safe filling my reusable bottle with water from the tap. This brings up a related point.
Walking around campus, I’ve noticed that more people are using reusable water bottles. Now, everyone knows that water is good for you, and because most college students are poor, it would do your body and your wallet good to purchase a reusable bottle and fill it with crisp, clean Sebago water. Those of you who don’t carry a reusable, or something like it, have you ever stopped to think about how much you spend on water?
The bottled water business is a $35 billion dollar world wide industry, and is rising steadily every year. Each bottle purchased, a dollar here, a dollar there, adds up to a big bill over the course of a year. Consider using that money for books and purchase a single durable, probably safer, reusable bottle. Leave expensive bottled water for an occasional “emergency” purchase. “Safer?” you ask, yeah, most people don’t know A typical cold beverage vending machine uses a lot of electricity. Over half of America’s electricity is generated by burning coal. The operation of an average cold beverage vending machine results in power plant air emissions that add up to well over a ton each year: over a ton of global-climate-disrupting carbon dioxide, acid-rain-creating sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, mercury and other pollutants. And that’s just the electricity needed to run one vending machine. The manufacture of and too-often disposed-of plastic bottles, the packaging, the smelly diesel transportation, the ozone-destroying refrigerants that steadily leak slowly from millions of compressors in millions of vending machines world wide. Yeah, a water fountain just might be the safer choice.
I’m proud to attend a campus where more and more people are sporting healthy, earth- friendly bottles filled with some of the cleanest lake water in the country; and I enjoy the beautiful flash of fall scenery while running to class.