CALAIS – Where the city will get its water is expected to be decided at the next meeting of the City Council.

The councilors are scheduled to meet April 25.

In the meantime, the councilors voted this week to apply for a $500,000 six-month loan from a local bank at 2.2 percent interest. The money is a stopgap measure until the city receives its federal funding.

Although the federal government did not say “the check is in the mail,” it did notify the city a few months ago it would receive $480,000 as reimbursement for the funds it spent while trying to locate a water source at the Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge.

Before the federal government will release the funds, an environmental assessment on the Milltown aquifer north of the city must be completed at a cost of up to $2,000. Milltown is a village in Calais.

For the past five years, the issue of where to get the city’s water has had as many ripples as a babbling brook.

For years, the city has bought its water from neighboring St. Stephen, New Brunswick. But changes in U.S. water standards forced the city to look elsewhere. St. Stephen plans to cut off its water to Calais in 2003.

Two years ago, the city explored the possibility of establishing a water source at Moosehorn. After months of discussion, federal officials backed away from a possible deal because they believe it might set a harmful precedent for large landowners in the water-hungry Western states who might want to pump water from federal lands.

The city also explored the possibility of buying its water from nearby Baileyville, but it appears most of the councilors favor developing a city-owned water source.

Earlier this year, the city entered into an agreement with local businessman Larry Mahar to buy the 43-acre site he owns over the Milltown aquifer. They had hoped to place their primary well there.

They voted to pay Mahar $600,000 for the parcel on the conditions the water needed no treatment and the site would produce enough water for the city’s water system.

Neither goal was achieved, and the councilors now are renegotiating the purchase price. The land was appraised at $42,000. “We are very close, very close,” Mayor Eric Hinson said at a special meeting of the City Council earlier this week.

The city also is talking with officials at Domtar’s pulp and paper mill in Baileyville about a 5-acre parcel the corporation owns near the Mahar property.

Hinson said Domtar officials had said they would not be opposed to a move by the city to take the land by eminent domain. “We sunk a test well in there and found more gravel, and it’s actually a better site than the primary well, because it has a bigger reservoir in there,” he said.

One consideration might be to construct the primary well on Domtar land and a secondary well on the Mahar land.