Accused of pumping uranium-laden water to hundreds of customers from a well in Tamworth that three years earlier was ordered closed, Lakes Region Water Co. now faces criminal charges and a class-action lawsuit.

The company, which has about 2,000 customers in the Lakes Region, is mired in legal troubles following a slew of reported violations. In Tamworth last year, investigators filed multiple complaints: The company didn't properly seal its wells, letting in insects and animals; mouse feces littered the top of its water storage tank; and E. coli in one well left the town without drinking water for weeks.

But the criminal charges and class-action lawsuit are based on what began with a 2004 violation, when testing at the company's bedrock well in Tamworth turned up elevated levels of uranium. The state Department of Environmental Services ordered the well closed, and the company assured the state that it had been, with all pipes and electrical connections severed. The company began using a different well to serve Tamworth, and the state took the old well off its sampling schedule.

Three years later, in August 2007, a routine water test found E. coli in the Tamworth well's water. When DES investigators showed up the next day to examine the well, they discovered that bacteria in the water wasn't the only problem: The old well, supposedly out of service, was still being used. And it still had too much uranium.

Though the company shut down the old well last September in the presence of DES officials, the court cases are only beginning. Last week, Lakes Region Water pleaded not guilty to two felony charges: supplying water with illegal levels of uranium and maintaining a well unapproved by the state. The next hearing is scheduled for the end of October.

The class-action suit, which could involve as many as 265 plaintiffs, was declared in August, but a trial date has yet to be scheduled.

And Tamworth residents are still upset about the waterless period last August and September, when the E. coli, uranium and other contaminants forced the company to temporarily close its well. Business owners who went without water say they endured crippling financial hardships. But what's most distressing, people said, is worrying about what exactly they drank.

"It left certainly a fear factor of what are the long-reaching health effects of ingesting uranium-laced water for God only knows how long," said Jo Anne Rainville, a nurse in Tamworth who is one of the plaintiffs in the civil suit. "Are people going to come down with problems 10 or 15 years from now? . . . It's looking at the long-range issues that I found the most concerning."

Uranium, which can seep into wells from bedrock, is associated with a number of health risks, including kidney toxicity and cancer, according to state DES officials. That's the reason the federal government began to regulate uranium in 2000, a standard that went into effect in New Hampshire in 2003, officials said.

Unlike bacteria, when just a little can make a person sick, uranium-related risks increase along with the amount ingested, said Dave Gordon, a health risk assessor with the DES environmental health program.

Still, he said, "you're really generally talking about many, many years" of exposure.

What's unclear is how long the well may have been pumping out uranium. Lakes Region Water has said that it reconnected the well not long before DES investigators showed up last August, said Christopher Meier, an attorney with Cooper Cargill Chant in North Conway who is representing Tamworth residents and business owners in the lawsuit.

Meier disputes that explanation.

"If they were telling the truth back in 2004, they would have had to rewire the system and re-pipe the system in order to turn the system back on," Meier said. "They couldn't just switch it on. From the information we have, it looks like they never took the system offline."

Steve Duggan, an attorney with Shaheen and Gordon who has filed paperwork on behalf of Lakes Region Water in the civil suit, said he couldn't comment until the company had decided who its lawyers would be going forward.

Single page