HOLDEN – Linda Nickerson was taking a shower in May 2004 when she first noticed something was wrong with her water.

To her, the water flowing over her smelled like tar.

“It just smelled weird,” she said recently. “The water smelled very peculiar.”

Linda and Norris Nickerson, who live at 11 Church Hill Road, soon discovered that the tar smell was the result of MTBE (methyl tertiary-butyl ether), a colorless and potentially cancer-causing gasoline additive that had found its way into their well. MTBE has been used in gasoline since the 1970s but will be banned completely in Maine beginning in 2007.

More than two years after the Maine Department of Environmental Protection confirmed the contamination of the Nickersons’ single-family well, however, DEP personnel and the couple continue to disagree over how to remedy the problem.

Both parties concede that the sparring, which sometimes has been antagonistic, has slowed the process and made coming to an agreement over a solution more difficult.

In the last decade, the DEP has gained considerable experience investigating more than 1,000 MTBE-contaminated wells, sometimes resolving the problem by providing filtration systems, sometimes digging new wells, and sometimes doing both at public expense.

However, the Nickersons have refused a filtering system, and a new well, in part because the DEP has not been able to identify the source of the MTBE tainting their water, which makes the couple fear the contamination will only recur.

“It is highly unusual for someone to refuse to let us put a filter on their well,” Bruce Hunter, DEP hydrogeologist, states in a Jan. 5, 2005, e-mail to a superior. “And it is very upsetting to us that someone is being exposed to a carcinogen from their well water.”

The filter system “does nothing to correct the problem,” Norris Nickerson countered during a recent interview. “All it does is put on a Band-Aid. I want just one thing – the source found and corrected.”

In the more than two years that the stalemate has gone on, the Holden couple has traveled daily to a relative’s home in Bangor, a distance of seven miles, to wash and cook.

“We come to Bangor every day to take showers, do laundry and prepare meals,” Linda Nickerson said. “We haven’t had a meal in my house since May 2004. I wouldn’t wish this upon anyone.”

The tainted water, they say, has ruined their appliances, including the dishwasher, clothes washer and refrigerator that has an ice maker in the door. The only water used at the Holden home is to operate the toilet, the couple said.

Dissatisfied early on with the DEP’s efforts, Norris Nickerson, principal of Bangor High School, and his wife sought the help of Gov. John Baldacci, whom they refer to as a close personal friend.

Baldacci arranged for weekly water tests to be paid for by the DEP, beginning in October 2004, but the couple refused to let department personnel into their home to collect water samples.

“There is nothing in my house that’s contaminating,” Norris Nickerson said. “It’s outside the house that’s contaminated. There is no business need in my house. I’ll never let them in.”

Typically, the DEP tests tap water from the kitchen of homes with contaminated wells, but in this case opted to allow the couple to collect the weekly samples themselves and to mail them to a lab in Winslow that the state uses.

DEP documents and a staff report on the case also indicate that in the first two months of their probe the agency took more than 70 soil and water samples of its own, including of the Nickersons’ property, 11 neighboring wells, and several local sites where potential contamination might have originated. The results were insufficient to pinpoint the source of the gasoline.

“Other homes in the area were tested and they came up clean,” Cleve Leckey, a DEP oil and hazardous materials specialist who works out of the Bangor office, said recently. “We offered them filters, quarterly monitoring and, after a period of time, offered them another well. They never took us up on the offers.

“We have a procedure,” he added. “Had we gone the usual route, the problem would have been solved. We have gone way beyond the call of duty” by doing the weekly testing, required by an agreement between the governor’s office and the Nickersons.

New cases every year

While the tone of the Nickerson-DEP dispute may be unusually harsh, the scenario is a familiar one to the state agency.

After the state Bureau of Health found MTBE in a number of private and public wells in 1997, the Legislature expanded an oil cleanup fund designed to handle tanker spills on the coast to include gasoline and heating oil spills on land.

A tax of 3 cents per barrel on petroleum imported into the state helps maintain a balance of about $6 million in the Maine Coastal and Inland Surface Oil Clean-up Fund, which is used to cover DEP’s expenses for reviewing contamination complaints and resolving them. About $2.3 million was spent on petroleum cleanups last year.

While the total number of complaints concerning petroleum contamination has dropped off in recent years, the DEP still handles 60-80 new cases a year, according to George Seel, director of the Division of Technical Services for the DEP’s Bureau of Remediation & Waste Management.

About half the new cases each year involve single-family wells, and most involve home heating oil spills, he said. While about 80 to 90 cases are resolved each year, 318 cases remained open as of July 1.

Home heating oil spills are typically easier to locate and clean up because the fuel is colored and often found near the fill pipe or oil tank, according to Seel.

Gasoline and MTBE contamination is more difficult to trace and typically costs the DEP between $10,000 and $15,000 – including the cost of a new well – to remedy each case, he said.

The state has spent about $22,900 on the Nickersons’ case as of mid-July, mostly for the $140 weekly water tests, according to DEP officials.

The results of the soil and water tests in the Nickersons’ case have led DEP officials to determine that the contamination is from a localized spill or the mishandling of gasoline, a point that the homeowners adamantly dispute.

“The source is likely a small spill or the cumulative impact of a number of smaller spills,” DEP Commissioner David Littell states in a letter he wrote to the Nickersons in February, two weeks after meeting with them in an effort to settle their case. DEP documents state the spill amount was probably less than a gallon.

“You should clearly understand that the reality is that each year we encounter a number of cases where we are never able to determine the source of the petroleum contamination, much like your case,” Littell says in the letter. “Like your case, these often involve bedrock wells. Further expenditures of staff time and state funds is highly unlikely to be fruitful given the investigation to date.”

Small spills often “occur while refueling, discarding of old gasoline improperly, or leaking vehicles,” according to the DEP.

Norris Nickerson firmly denies spilling any gasoline in the 43 years he has lived at the home and takes great offense at what he calls the DEP’s accusations.

“The DEP has made considerable accusations to the fact that I’m sabotaging my own property with spills when I filled up my snowmobile or lawnmower or whatever,” he said. “I would have had to spill a tanker full to have it go on for the last two and a half years.”

DEP officials disagree.

“The contaminants would have been higher if it was a large spill,” Seel said.

Can’t trust the water

Many weeks, the water samples taken from the Nickerson home in the last two years have contained no detectable level of MTBE. Other weeks, detectable levels have ranged from 0.61 parts per billion to a high of 79 parts per billion.

Maine’s current drinking water standard allows for MTBE readings of 35 parts per billion. That level, according to the state, provides “large margins of safety” from the toxic effects.

The DEP, however, starts taking action – such as installing filtration systems on homeowner’s water supplies or offering to dig new wells – when MTBE levels reach 25 parts per billion.

The Nickersons’ water samples have exceeded 25 parts per billion five times – twice in December 2004, once in February 2005 and twice in October 2005.

“We can’t trust that water,” said Linda Nickerson said. “We never know from week to week what our numbers are.”

Other gasoline additives found with the MTBE in the Nickersons’ water samples also indicate the contamination happened close to the homeowners’ well, Seel said.

“The other compounds of gasoline degrade in the environment more rapidly and therefore do not travel as far,” he explained.

“Really, the only thing we can, with some assurances, state is that we’re dealing with a local source of contamination,” Seel said. “Local being within a couple hundred feet.”

The bedrock well, built in 1963, is underground and centrally located in the Nickersons’ front yard between the house and the road, and is about 75 feet or so from both neighboring property lines.

Because the source of the MTBE has not been identified through the DEP’s testing and investigation, and no gasoline tanker spills or car accidents have been reported in the residential area, state officials say they have exhausted all reasonable options for finding the source.

“If we wanted to spend $100,000 we could do soil boring on their property, and that might give us some clues,” Seel said, stressing the word might. “However, given that we’re only dealing with a single well, the most cost-effective thing would be to implement corrective measures: to put in the replacement well … and a point of entry [filter] system.”

Granulated carbon filtration systems have been used successfully in other cases to remove contaminants from well water to not only below Maine drinking water standards, but also below lab detection levels, according to Seel.

The water would be “just as clean as municipal water and free of the chlorine used in municipal systems,” he said.

The Nickersons, however, say the filtration system is only a “Band-Aid” if the source of the contamination is not found. Until that source is found, a filtration system would do nothing to restore the market value of their 4-acre property and home, which the town of Holden recently assessed at $220,350, they said.

Norris Nickerson, who at times spoke angrily about DEP officials, said he doesn’t care how much it costs, he wants the state to find the source of the problem.

“I don’t care if it costs $200,000,” he said. “My home right now has zero value.”

The bottom line

The Nickersons say the DEP has done little to help find the source of contamination since the MTBE was first detected on their property.

They have communicated with the governor about their dilemma both in person and by phone on several occasions, most recently after a July 17 meeting that Baldacci called with DEP leaders.

“He’s assured us they will find the source,” Linda Nickerson said.

When contacted by the Bangor Daily News about the case in July, the governor said he knows the couple is frustrated with the DEP.

“I’m making sure the department is doing everything appropriate to find the source,” Baldacci said, adding later: “Once we figure out the source, we can figure out the solution.”

During the July 17 meeting, Baldacci met with Littell, State Geologist Robert Marvinney, and Erik Anderson, assistant to the commissioner of the Department of Conservation.

“The Nickersons are obviously questioning what our folks have done,” Littell said this week. “The governor thought we should get someone else, with expertise, to look at it.”

Marvinney, who is also director of the Maine Geological Survey, was the expert selected to review the case.

Shortly after visiting the Nickerson property on July 25, he told the BDN, “What I’ve been directed to do is review the actions of the DEP for their adequacy assurances and appropriateness, and to make recommendations for any additional work that needs to be done at the Nickerson property.”

He said once the report was complete, a copy would be made available to the Nickersons before it was made public.

Littell said he’s very confident the review by Marvinney will show his department has done everything reasonably possible to resolve the Nickersons’ problems.

“When it comes down to it at the end of the day, this is what the law allows,” the commissioner said.

The Nickersons have said repeatedly that all they want is the DEP to find the source of the MTBE contamination and to clean it up, but according to a letter given to Littell at their January meeting, they have also made additional requests, including asking for $300 a day in compensation for the inability to use their water since May 2004. That compensation currently amounts to more than $230,000.

They also ask for, among other things, a new appraisal of their home and reimbursement for any loss of market value; reimbursements for legal, geological and appraisal fees; damages for libelous statements made by DEP officials; and compensation for unspecified long-term health impacts resulting from the exposure.

Littell said the Nickersons’ requests will be evaluated once a final resolution concerning the contaminated well is determined.

“We literally have hundreds of these mystery spills,” Littell said. “We try to deal with them in the most effective way. The Nickersons have, so far, been unable to accept this hypothesis.”

But, Linda Nickerson believes, “The bottom line is they have not done an adequate job looking for the source.”

She said she’s exhausted and only wants what any homeowner would want – to be able to live in and enjoy her home.

“We live in limbo,” she said. “Just come find my problem, and we’ll go away.”