CARIBOU, Maine — Since 2015, Caribou and Limestone have received three awards for best tasting water from the Maine Rural Water Association. The town of Limestone won in 2015, Caribou Utilities District won the following year, and this year an ACAP site in Caribou took home the award.
Russell Plourde, owner of RP Water Quality Monitoring, LLC in Caribou, is the state-licensed operator in charge of ACAP’s well, and will be traveling with Maine Rural Water Association officials to Washington, D.C., in February 2019 to compete with all of the state winners.
While this is Plourde’s first award for best tasting water, it also marks the first time he entered the competition. The same applied for the Caribou Utilities District when the municipal organization won the statewide award the first year it threw its cup into the ring.
Russell Plourde, owner of RP Water Quality Monitoring, LLC in Caribou and water operator for Caribou’s ACAP facility, recently won a statewide award for having the best tasting water in the state. (Chris Bouchard)
Plourde said he was pleasantly surprised to learn he’d won, and that the award is “outstanding” news for the Caribou area.
He said the water at the Bowles Road ACAP facility goes from the well, into a canister filter, then through softener, and finally one more filter before going through a final UV filter and coming out of the tap.
Kristen Hebert, executive director at the Maine Rural Water Association said The County’s successful stream of victories indicates an “exciting trend” for the region.
“For the last several years, the best tasting water has come out of Aroostook County,” she said, adding that Plourde “does a fantastic job as water operator” and takes his job very seriously.
With both Plourde and the City of Caribou winning two awards upon their first year of entering the competition, Hebert said she hopes officials overseeing other water systems are encouraged to enter as well.
Both Plourde and Hebert said they were looking forward to the national water tasting contest next year at the nation’s capital.
“I don’t envy the judges,” Hebert joked,” that’s a lot of water to get through.”
She added that while some may think of this as a “silly contest,” it presents a “fantastic opportunity” for water operators across the country to be proud of the “good, clean water” they help produce.
