Four water districts in the Greater Bangor area recently started talks that could lead to regional cooperation or even a regional water district.

The discussions are in the preliminary stages and include the Bangor, Brewer, Hampden, and Orono-Veazie water districts. Participants say that so far they cannot provide answers, only pose questions.

The focus of the talks has been the high cost of meeting the requirements of the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1986. One of the requirements is that districts filter water for consumption drawn from lakes, ponds or rivers. The districts can apply for exemptions.

The Bangor district is by far the largest in the area and sells water to Orono-Veazie and Hampden. A filtration plant to meet future needs would cost the Bangor Water District between $9 million and $15 million.

Were the Brewer Water District to go at it alone, a filtration plant could cost Brewer about $3.1 million.

“We’ve had preliminary talks with the Bangor Water District,” Gerald Carstensen, superintendent of the Brewer district, said Tuesday. “We’ve applied for an exemption from filtration if that exemption is not allowed, a regional filtration plant might make sense.”

The Environmental Protection Agency has tightened the rules on how water must be treated. The Bangor Water District proposes replacing chlorine treatment with a system using ozone and estimates that building a new treatment plant could cost $1.2 million.

While facing the costs of meeting federal mandates, Bangor is also looking for a new source of water.

Bangor draws all its water from Floods Pond but the district has begun to research costs of developing a second source of water. The need for an alternative source is driven by several factors that include protecting the rare Sunapee Charr that inhabits Bangor’s water source, meeting the future demand, and ameliorating reliance on a sole source that could become contaminated.

An agreement between the Bangor Water District and the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife to protect the Sunapee Charr calls for the Orono-Veazie and Hampden water districts to be weaned from total reliance on Bangor’s water supply. During its first five years, it calls for Bangor to limit the amount of water it draws from Floods Pond to an annual average of 6 million gallons a day. Currently the district pumps about 5.9 million gallons a day from the pond.

Drawing water from a second source would require that the Bangor district build a filtration plant for that water. Using a secondary source of water could lessen the need for Bangor’s customer districts to draw from their own sources.

“There are inherent advantages in diversifying our source,” Mark Friedman, a trustee of the district, said during a meeting at the NEWS. “Hampden, and Orono-Veazie have to develop supplemental supply projects of their own. But our ultimate target is to have supplemental sources on line by 2011.”

Serious talk of the need for a second source, and of the potential for regional cooperation is new for the Bangor Water District. In the past, the trustees and the general manager Peter Caldwell had expressed the hope that they would be granted a waiver from building a filtration plant and that they could get by with the volume of water available from Floods Pond.

But, Franklin Bragg, chairman of the trustees, said, “We’ve heard the hoof beats and realized that it made more sense to plan for the inevitable.” Building a treatment plant and developing a new source would be cheaper the sooner it was done, he said.

Brewer does not need to develop a secondary source of water, Carstensen said.

Plans drawn up by the Bangor district indicate that it will need one more source. It has been looking at the costs of developing Beech Hill Pond, Fitts Pond, and Springy Pond all east of Bangor. The price ranges from $1.1 million to develop Fitts Pond with an average daily yield of .65 million gallons, to $8.7 million for Beech Hill Pond with an average daily yield of 5 million gallons. Another factor in the higher cost is laying the pipe to a site where it would be convenient to pump water to a jointly owned pumping station.

The costs of providing water could increase beyond the ability of a single district to absorb them. No specifics have been discussed. But, Carstensen said, “Until our board and the Bangor Water District sit down and talk formally, it’s all just speculation. But you certainly have to look at the cost effectiveness of it.”