MACHIASPORT – The Army Corps of Engineers is moving to the next phase in its cleanup of a former Bucks Harbor defense site, a project the agency has ranked one of its top two priorities in New England.

David Margolis, the corps project manager for the cleanup, said Monday that Weston Solutions Inc. is preparing to drill into the bedrock aquifer beneath the former U.S. Air Force radar sites on Howard and Miller mountains.

Margolis said consulting engineers from Weston will drill in 11 areas in hopes of determining the path that toxic trichloroethylene, known as TCE, took from the radar sites to 15 residential wells.

TCE was detected in the wells in 1995, 11 years after the radar site closed. The corps is charged with the cleanup of environmental contaminants at former defense sites.

“We know what the source [of the TCE] is and where it will end up,” Margolis said during Monday’s public meeting at the Machiasport Town Office.

“We want to know how it gets from A to B in the bedrock aquifer.”

If the testing can determine where the TCE is and how it is moving, it may be possible to clean the solvent from the aquifer, Margolis said.

The consultants also are drilling a water supply test well, a possible source of a public water supply if removal is not an option, he said.

Margolis said that rather than wait for the results of the TCE investigation, which could take a year, townspeople should decide how they would like a public water supply to operate by working with Steve Levy, executive director of the Maine Rural Water Association.

Levy said there are three options for running a public water supply. The town can:

. Establish a municipal water department.

. Set up a nonprofit association, similar to a camp owners’ organization.

. Organize a water district.

Levy said Maine has 90 water districts, which are quasi-municipal organizations set up by the Legislature and ratified by voters.

Levy will meet with members of a restoration advisory board, which is a group of local residents working with the corps and the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Margolis said he expects the drilling to begin at the end of January and hopes to complete the work by the end of September 2003. The results of the testing – the vertical and horizontal delineation of the TCE – will determine whether the contaminant can be removed.

One removal operation involves pumping and treating the water or injecting the aquifer with molasses or hydrogen peroxide to speed the degradation of the TCE.

That will be contrasted with other options, such as a new water supply, Margolis said.

Once the corps develops a proposal, it will be put out for public comment before a final decision document is produced for regulators to agree on, he said.

Monday night’s meeting comes seven years after the initial detection of TCE in residential wells, and nine months after a February meeting in which the corps announced that it would explore cleaning the aquifer in response to DEP comments that most of the corps cleanup proposals were simply “responses” rather than remediation.

Several speakers Monday mentioned the length of time the project is taking and the fact that Margolis is the fourth project manager since the work began, but Margolis said the corps is committed to getting the work done.

The only New England project that is a higher priority is a former defense site in Massachusetts, he said.