Why This 11-Square-Mile Watershed Matters.
Apr 23, 2026
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by the Maine Seacoast Mission.
BAR HARBOR—How healthy is the Northeast Creek Watershed on Mount Desert Island?
The town of Bar Harbor, led by Staff Planner Hailey Bondy, hopes to find out.
Bondy presented data from the beginning of the watershed testing to the Town Council, April 21. The most recent testing began when the town enrolled this past year in the DEP’s (Department of Environmental Protection’s) Volunteer River Monitoring Program.
The DEP reviews the data collected and creates a report before the town can release the information. The DEP finished that review in early April.
“With how much water changes, especially over the four month period that we collected samples, six individual sampling events isn’t necessarily enough to tell us any conclusive evidence. We need more data to do that,” Bondy told the councilors.
So, they are getting the data, collecting it with volunteers, for at least the next few years.
The Northeast Creek Watershed encompasses 11 square miles, draining water from various sources into the ocean and the land.
According to the National Ocean Service (NOS), a watershed like Northeast Creek is “a land area that channels rainfall and snowmelt to creeks, streams, and rivers, and eventually to outflow points such as reservoirs, bays, and the ocean.”
The health of the watershed matters because most ocean pollution begins on land—about 80%.
Healthy watersheds, according to the DEP are uncommon. The health of a watershed is, however, important.
Good fishing comes from healthy watersheds. Good and clean drinking water from wells come from healthy watersheds. Property values are higher if the property is in a healthy watershed.
There is also, obviously, an environmental component. Watersheds impact the water bodies that they drain to, support fisheries, recreational opportunities, and ways of life.
The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) states, “A healthy watershed is one in which natural land cover supports:
- “dynamic hydrologic and geomorphologic processes within their natural range of variation,
- “habitat of sufficient size and connectivity to support native aquatic and riparian species, and
- “physical and chemical water quality conditions able to support healthy biological communities.”
What happens is this: water flows from creeks. It flows from streams. It moves from high ground to lower ground. As it flows, it can pick up pollutants. Those pollutants can negatively impact the watershed’s ecology and then the ecology of the ocean or bay where the water ends up.
Though a lot of water flows into a larger water body, some soaks into the ground, particularly during a rain storm.
“This groundwater remains in the soil, where it will eventually seep into the nearest stream. Some water infiltrates much deeper, into underground reservoirs called aquifers. In other areas, where the soil contains a lot of hard clay, very little water may infiltrate. Instead, it quickly runs off to lower ground,” NOS explains.
The town intends to keep collecting the water quality data every year. The report, that Bondy told councilors that she is proud of, has a lot of background.
“Rain and snowmelt from watersheds travel via many routes to the sea. During periods of heavy rain and snowfall, water may run onto and off of impervious surfaces such as parking lots, roads, buildings, and other structures because it has nowhere else to go. These surfaces act as ‘fast lanes’ that transport the water directly into storm drains. The excess water volume can quickly overwhelm streams and rivers, causing them to overflow and possibly result in floods,” the NOS continues.
Along with the DEP monitoring program, Bar Harbor received a Nonpoint Source Water Pollution Control Grant from the federal EPA.
That plan is expected to monitor the watershed’s water quality, analyze area septic systems within the Northeast Creek watershed and collect data. It will be completed in 2027 at the earliest. The data from 2025 will fold into the plan and help to create a baseline to understand the watershed’s health.
Volunteers visited watershed sites eight times between June 17 and Sept. 25. They looked to how much dissolved oxygen was in the water, the water’s temperature, if there was any E. coli or fecal coliform, bacteria that can cause illness.
A particularly high E. coli sample was found at NECO1, which is located on Acadia National Park land, accessed via a Stone Barn Farm preserve trail.
Each site, each test, only represents one moment in time. The water samples change because it’s dynamic. Environmental conditions can make huge differences in how much bacteria might be in a sample.
“To effectively monitor such a system that is constantly changing, frequent sampling over time is required to account for continual fluctuations,” the MDI Bio Lab wrote in a report about the watershed.
Beaver dams, dry summers, road construction can all impact data as can human error from the volunteers testing the sites.
“This drought resulted in streams with very low water levels; in multiple instances, the streams were entirely dry and unable to be sampled,” read Bondy’s report. “In other instances, the water was completely stagnant, essentially a puddle with low or no visible water flow. These conditions are likely to cause low dissolved oxygen, high temperatures, and elevated levels of other parameters, which are not experiencing the dilution and mixing typical of a flowing stream environment.”
The most elevated contamination sites in the early testing came from a site in Acadia National Park where a Route 3 bridge crosses Northeast Creek; Aunt Betsy’s Brook and Liscomb Brook.
Though sites all had elevated phosphorus readings, nitrates and nitrites were not detected in high levels in the 2025 samples.
“Nitrate and nitrite were not detected in a majority of samples. Levels were generally low when detected, though some were higher than EPA reference values,” the report reads.
Plants need phosphorus to thrive, however too much in water causes multiple problems.
According to the US Geological Survey (USGS) phosphorus “can cause explosive growth of aquatic plants and algae. This can lead to a variety of water-quality problems, including low dissolved oxygen concentrations, which can cause fish kills and harm other aquatic life.”
Nitrates and nitrites levels in streams is often due to fertilizer runoff from lawns and farm fields as well as sewage. Too much nitrates in a waterbody can lead to too little oxygen in that same water.
“Excess nitrogen can cause overstimulation of growth of aquatic plants and algae. Excessive growth of these organisms, in turn, can clog water intakes, use up dissolved oxygen as they decompose, and block light to deeper waters. Lake and reservoir eutrophication can occur, which produces unsightly scums of algae on the water surface, can occasionally result in fish kills, and can even “kill” a lake by depriving it of oxygen. When respiration efficiency in fish and aquatic invertebrates declines, often due to low dissolved oxygen, ecosystem diversity decreases, and the water becomes less suitable for recreation such as fishing, swimming, and boating,” the USGS explains.
It can hurt infants under four months by causing blue baby syndrome and also young livestock.
Since the 1990s multiple agencies have sporadically tested the watershed. Those agencies include the U.S. Geological Survey, Maine Department of Marine Resources, Maine Department of Environmental Protection, University of Maine, College of the Atlantic, Lake Stewards of Maine, and Stratex, a consulting firm.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
Background data from report:
Pace Labs Nutrient Sampling Results can be found here
Fecal Coliform Results can be found here
E. Coli Results can be found here
Elevated E. Coli Found in Northeast Creek Watershed Testing, Town Monitoring Ongoing.
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Mar 31
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