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People talk about water a lot. That seems a little excessive for something that literally falls from the sky, but as one of (if not the) main elements responsible for life itself, water is important! A community without safe drinking water suffers health issues and added hardship. Farms literally wither up when rainfall is scarce. We should talk about water, but how deep does this well go? We did a deep dive with Sam from Maher Water Care to talk a little about their history in the community, and a lot about how water works!
Wisconsin is synonymous with water. About 6.4 million acres of lakes Michigan and Superior and 95,000 acres of the Upper Mississippi River lie within Wisconsin's borders. In addition, Wisconsin has over 15,000 lakes and 13,500 miles of streams and rivers (that’s more than Minnesota, the “Land of 10,000 Lakes” but we won’t brag like they do). About 1.2 billion gallons of Wisconsin's water lie underground. If it were all above ground, the entire state would be submerged 100 feet below water! Our home city of Stevens Point was even named a City of Wonderful Waters far back in the 1920s, and we think our wonderful water helps give Point Beer its distinctive flavor.
Now, if our area water is so great, why would we need Maher Water Care, a company that supplies water softening systems? It gets technical, but Sam is happy to break it down for us.
The Beginning of Maher Water Care
The idea of purifying and filtering water has existed for thousands of years. Water treatment as an industry has been around for hundreds, and Sam says it really got going after World War II. These days it’s a huge field involving advanced technology and knowledge of chemistry, natural systems, and entirely different industries and how they use (and sometimes abuse) our water resources.
Maher Water got its start just after the war, when Sam’s wife’s grandfather (so, his grandfather-in-law) Paul, a pilot, came home. He wanted to start a flying service out of Stevens Point called Maher Flying Service. He got together with some friends over the years, and one of his friends had a water treatment rental that delivered water tanks.
Paul later bought the water treatment business for $5,000 with the idea that it would help support his flying company. Almost 75 years and three generations later, Maher Water Care is still going strong! Sam himself married into the company, bringing with him a degree in chemistry from UW-Stevens Point. His wife, Danielle is a master plumber. Together, they’ve got water and delivery systems covered!
While his wife ran the company, Sam got sent out into the field, where they found he was good at communicating and educating people on all things water related. That’s how they started working with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
Sam says, “I was the one that kind of spearheaded the educational program for the DNR. I get to talk to the legislators on anything water related. We work with the DNR to help them on bacteria testing, different processes of how things can be treated, how things can't be treated, when is the best time to call a well driller, when's the best time to treat. We try to do education sessions. Even earlier this spring, the Groundwater Association had me in down in Plover to speak to the Division of Health on sample collection procedures, because they are hiring people to go out and collect samples for bacteria.”
Sam approaches water practically and holistically, taking into account the makeup of the soil and how it changes the water as it filters. Some of his points include:
Farther north in Wisconsin, there is very little limestone in the soil, so the water is softer but more acidic (which pine trees love) but acidic water is very hard on water heaters, pipes, and other water systems – “It eats everything,” Sam says.
But if someone is in one of the goldilocks zones with excellent water, Sam says Maher will talk them out of a treatment solution. “If we test the water, and we find that it's good, we're not going to try to sell you something. Because there are honestly times where we just look at them and say, your water is perfect, don't touch it.”
If Sam says your water is good, he knows what he’s talking about. On top of his impressive chemistry credentials, he’s also a licensed well driller and pump installer. He knows how wells work, he’s familiar with the code, and he understands soil structures and geology. In 31 years, he’s only found five wells he couldn’t fix, and the solution was the same: drill deeper. With 85% of Wisconsin using well water, he has experience to back him up.
Wisconsin: Land of Good Water
The upper Midwest is doing pretty well, water-wise. We are right on top of the world’s largest freshwater deposit. Sam says that someone in Wisconsin Rapids could possibly drill 12 feet down and have perfectly safe water. Other parts of the country need to drill 500 – 700 deep just to find water, and even then, there’s no guarantee it will be safe to drink without processing.
The soils that contain water are the biggest part of how accessible and safe that water can be. Apart from how different types of soil affect water quality, water flow is also impacted by soil and mineral deposits.
Sam explains how it works: “The average homeowner, when they hear of a well, they think of a pipe that goes down the ground that is tapped into an underground lake or river. That is not what groundwater is. Groundwater, think of it like a sponge: just soil that's holding the water. Certain soils will flow much quicker. So if it's sandy soil, the water just flows right into that well really quick.”
And the soil composition varies across even the central part of the state! “Where I'm at,” he says, “Mosinee, my well is 380 feet deep. It's in solid granite. And the entire length of that, only half a gallon a minute flows into my well. And that'll impart the different characteristics of the water, whether it's iron, manganese, pH issues, hardest compounds. Over in the lakes area of Waupaca - all limestone - the water flows in really quick, but you end up with extremely hard water coming out of that compared to an area like Merrill, where there's almost no limestone, but it's all granite. So they end up with a different type of flow pattern.”
“At the end of the day,” he says, “the soil is what tells us what we need to do.”
Why not just use an off-the-shelf purifier?
All those variables in the soil makeup and density, the level of the water, and what may or may not need to be filtered out during the purification process is why Sam is leery about one-size-fits-all water softening systems you can pick up at a big box store. A service like Maher Water, Culligan or EcoWater will test the water and consider all the variables involved in your well, water type, soil, and even how you need to use your water before they settle on the proper type of water softener for your needs.
The terms “soft water” and “hard water” refer to the mineral content. Hard water has higher levels of dissolved minerals, which can lead to mineral buildups, staining, and dry skin. On the other hand soft water, which as lower levels of most minerals, has higher sodium content. Soft water is gentler on hair and skin, but can taste a little salty and feel slipperier, and often doesn’t lather as well when cleaning with detergents.
Finding that balance is one of the big reasons Maher Water Care’s technicians drive all over the state of Wisconsin testing and installing customized systems – and they have a whole fleet of vehicles to use (see? Cars. We’re predictable that way).
The Maher Water Vehicle Fleet
Maher Water’s team drives a little bit of everything, from smaller, fuel-efficient vehicles for their sales team to pickup trucks used by the office staff for local deliveries, to the large box trucks used as delivery and plumbing vehicles. When Sam and his wife bought the company 13 years ago, there were nine fleet vehicles. Now they have 21.
With that many vehicles running all over the state, maintenance is high on their list. They need to get the most out of their fleet, after all, and Sam says our techs at Schierl Tire & Auto Service have helped their team dial in the regular maintenance that keeps them on the road and (mostly) out of the shop.
He says, “We've got daily checklists that the guys will go through and check oil, tires, duallies, things like that. There's weekly checklists that they have to do, checking lugs and different items. But at the end of the day, my drivers have to be on top of their trucks. We ask them to schedule the oil changes, get them done when they need to be done. If I go out back and I see an oil change is overdue, it doesn't fly. I've had two drivers that have seized up engines that we've had to replace.”
He says a lot of their maintenance systems and advice include regular checks, familiarization with the vehicle, and constant communication. “Let Schierl know right away if you think it's not right. Call somebody over at Schierl and say, ‘Do you think I need this towed back or do you think it's OK to maybe limp it back?’ Just simple things like that. Listen to the vehicle that you're driving.”
It's important for them to keep everything running smoothly. Their delivery trucks average 15,000 to 30,000 miles per year, and the sales team’s cars average 25,000 to 35,000. Sam himself puts 45,000 – 50,000 miles on his own truck every year. To have even one vehicle fail will impact the business. But with their regular checks and maintenance, he says they typically expect to get around 300,000 miles out of a work truck over about 10 years. It helps to take some common-sense precautions that prolong the life of your vehicle and have less of an environmental impact.
Should We Worry About PFAS?
Speaking of the environment, Rob mentions a newer concern with our groundwater: Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances, commonly referred to as PFAS. He asks Sam when Maher will start offering machines to filter out PFAS, and Sam says not to lose any sleep over it just yet.
As with any water related contaminant, the EPA sets what's called an MCL, a maximum contaminant level. That's the level at which they found human health effects start to show up. The EPA started studying PFAS in 2012. Right now, PFAS is still in the final stages of being tested to find out what that number needs to be, and Congress has instructed the EPA to set that limit no later than September 1st, 2024.
Once they set the limit, every municipality in the entire country has three years to come into compliance to meet that standard. Private well owners don't have to meet the standard, but he says Maher has a lot of requests to test for it. “So here's the tricky part about testing for PFAS,” he says. “PFAS is measured in parts per trillion.”
It is a tiny particle. One part per trillion is equal to one drop of water in 20 Olympic swimming pools. Three inches in the distance between the earth and the moon and back. On top of that, there are only two labs in Wisconsin that are certified to test for PFAS, and it’s an expensive test.
Sam also mentions that PFAS is a group of chemicals. There are over 6,800 known PFAS compounds. If someone is testing for PFAS, they have to specify which of those 6,800 compounds to test for. The state of Wisconsin has gathered a list of 33 different PFAS compounds that have been used in the state primarily for construction and fabrication, and they found 33 to look for if you spend the $1,500 to $1,800 on the test.
Where did PFAS come from?
So how did this group of chemicals come about, and how did they get in our water? In World War II, Minnesota’s 3M Corporation was working on a paint additive that would prevent Sherman tanks from rusting. They settled on the idea of a water barrier that could be added to the paint, creating a chain of atoms connected with fluorine.
Sam’s chemistry background moves front and center as he explains. “It is the strongest bond known in chemistry between carbon and fluorine, it's almost unbreakable. You just can't separate those two. Once they're bound, you can't separate them. So they had this beautiful compound that was a great water barrier.”
But after the war ended, what were they supposed to do with it? DuPont bought the compound to use in their own products, and Teflon was born. The compound DuPont bought was known as C8, made up of eight carbon atoms, 16 fluorine atoms, and one hydrogen atom. After the success of Teflon, 3M figured that a compound using only seven carbon atoms would probably be just as strong, and DuPont didn’t own it. That compound became 3M’s own Scotchguard.
Other chemists started playing with that initial formula, creating other compounds by altering the formula by an atom or two each time – maybe one fewer carbon atom and TWO hydrogen atoms – and we ended up with over 6,800 different chemical compounds, collectively referred to as PFAS.
But how did these compounds get everywhere and end up in our drinking water? Products like Teflon and Scotchguard are the key to understanding that. Sam says, “Have you ever had stain resistant carpeting? PFAS. When you were a kid, let's say you went over to Herschel's diner or drive-in, you order a cheeseburger. How long before that paper that it came in soaked through with grease? A matter of minutes. Today, if you go to McDonald's and you buy a cheeseburger, that wrapper, you can let it sit there for days. It doesn't soak through. PFAS.”
He continues, “When you were a kid, if you ever had silly putty, one of the things that you like to do with silly putty is you go to the comics, you push down and, oh, look, Snoopy's on your silly putty. Today, you can't do that. The paper itself is coated with PFAS to keep it protected. Magazine paper in the olden days was very inky. It's not anymore.”
You can find PFAS chemicals in all sorts of stuff these days:
When all of these things are discarded and break down, the PFAS chemicals seep into the ground just like everything else. And that just sounds scary. However, it depends on how much PFAS is actually a concern, and that’s something we should know soon. Sam predicts the EPA’s number will be around four parts per trillion.
PFAS Capitol of Wisconsin: Stella
The highest recorded PFAS in Wisconsin is in the tiny town of Stella, just eight miles east of Rhinelander. For the past 50 years, local farmers have been buying sludge from area paper mills to use for fertilizer because it’s rich in phosphorus and nitrogen, which is ideal for plant growth. However, the mills were mostly creating glossy magazine paper, which has high levels of PFAS. If the maximum PFAS level ends up being four parts per trillion, Sam says he has customers in Stella that have tested 55,000 parts per trillion – and that could be a problem.
That said, there are systems available to tame those numbers. And even before that, Sam recommends keeping calm. He told us about a meeting he went to in Stella with the DNR to discuss exactly this issue.
“So the DNR invited me in to speak to a lot of the people there and just kind of talk them off a cliff. And I was able to get a lot of people calm down. I used [my customer] Mrs. Anderson as a perfect example. She's in this town hall meeting with 150 people and DNR is up there, I'm there, and they're talking about the surface water.
“Snowden Lake, which is one of the lakes in Stella, is recorded at 118 parts per trillion.
And Mrs. Anderson is just bawling. And so I said hold on a second. Mrs. Anderson, what are you crying about? She was ‘my grandkids come up every summer for six weeks and every day they're in Snowden Lake swimming.’
“And I said, okay, I understand that's a concern, but do you let your kids go outside without sunscreen? She says, well, no, absolutely not. I said, do you spray [sunscreen], or do you use the cream? She goes, we use both. I said, which one do you use most often? She goes, well, the spray is so much easier.
“So I told her, the average spray sunscreen has 2,800 parts per trillion of PFAS. The water [has] 118. Don't worry because even at 2,800, we don't know what's absorbed through the skin. It's going to be significantly higher [concentration level] to absorb through the skin than it will be if you're ingesting it. So unless your kids are drinking cups of water out of Snowden Lake, just ignore it and let your kids have fun. It's not worth losing sleep over.”
Wisconsin takes care of its own
The state of Wisconsin is very good about telling residents what to test for in their groundwater, and what levels are safe. Sam said the big one is bacteria like coliform or E. coli, usually introduced by animals or insects making their way into your well or even fecal matter. Whenever a new well is drilled, tests for this sort of thing are required.
In central Wisconsin, nitrates are a concern. Nitrates are produced by natural decay, but a lot of farmers use nitrogen-rich fertilizers, which can seep into the groundwater and raise the levels. Without surrounding farmland, nitrate levels are usually around three or four parts per million (PPM). Seven or eight PPM is usually the result of human behavior, and when you introduce nitrogen-based fertilizers levels can rise to up to 50 PPM in sandy soil, like potato farms.
Naturally occurring arsenic from St. Peter Sandstone can be an issue in Wisconsin, as can lead from older homes – up until 1984, lead-based solder was used in water pipes. Even with all these possibilities for contamination, Sam says there's no reason to be scared of your water. All of those things are very easily correctable, and Maher, Culligan, or Ecowork will all make sure your water is safe. And, Sam says, “We're going to come out and honestly tell you this is what needs to be done. Not try to scare you into buying the most expensive product we've got.”
He says Maher and most of the rest of the industry will test for the basics for free: iron, hardness, pH, TDS (total dissolved solids), and that sort of thing. And they’re happy to test for anything that will concern you. “If you're in a farming area and you say, well, what should I test? Well, you want to look for ag chemicals, atrazine, aldicarb, nitrates, phosphorus, things like that. If you're in an industrial area, you might want to look for PCBs. If you live near a landfill, you want to look for certain things. So yeah, testing your water can be done. There's great labs in the state of Wisconsin we have available to us.”
You can bring a water sample to Maher, but if you need a more specialized sample, their water consultants (in their little cars) can come to you and take the right kind of water sample to get tested. There is a right way to do it!
“So for instance,” Sam says, “with PFAS, I need to be in basically rubber gloves up to my elbow. I need to have a complete face shield on.” But it’s not for Sam’s protection! It’s so he doesn’t contaminate the sample himself. “I have to make sure that the shower gel that I used that morning doesn't contain PFAS, can't have any lotion on, no lip gloss. Because you're looking for such a small amount. There's a very strict set of instructions, how to sample for PFAS.”
The same goes for bacteria – if you’re taking a water sample and you set the cap on the counter, you might pick up more bacteria than what’s actually in the water. It’s very easy to contaminate a sample and end up with a bad test that gets you worried over nothing. And if there’s one thing we learned from Sam, it’s to keep a cool head and a good perspective. You can always test again.
And remember, we live in Wisconsin – our water is pretty darn good here!
Road Trip: EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin
Every year, the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) holds their annual fly-in in Oshkosh. Since 1953, spectators have been able to get up close to some amazing flying machines. They say it’s the busiest airport in a two-week period.
With 600,000 people and over 10,000 planes that come and go, there is always something amazing to experience at the fly-in. Air traffic controllers are brought in from around the country just to help because of the sheer number of planes flying in and out. You can literally walk between the planes and talk to the pilots, so if you’re interested in aircraft at all, this is the event for you!
It’s a solid day or even two of interesting technology and conversation, involving not just aircraft but special interest vehicles that you can walk up to and really get close. The EAA museum has their own collection of over 200 aircraft if you feel like visiting, but during the event, the air show is something to experience, complete with stunts and tricks.
While the 2024 AirVenture event wound down last weekend, the museum is open year-round and very much worth the trip. They have tons of aviation displays, airplanes and other aircraft, and feature speakers, special installments, and more. Visit their website for up-to-date information at https://www.eaa.org/eaa-museum
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