In the fall of 2023, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection tested 91 residential wells in Unity. Thirty-three came back with PFAS levels higher than the state considers safe. The worst of it clustered near Depot Street, where DEP deputy commissioner David Madore said the agency had identified 17 homes with concentrations above 20 parts per trillion, the state's safety standard at the time. Officials began arranging filtration systems for those households while the broader investigation, tied to decades of PFAS-laden sludge spread as fertilizer on farms in and around town, continued with no announced end date.
Nearly three years later, that investigation is still unfinished business for Maine as a whole. Reporting this spring confirmed the state is tightening its PFAS drinking water limits statewide, that the federal funding paying for filtration systems lapsed after the fiscal year closed this past June, and that the number of water systems failing to meet the new, stricter threshold could grow once expanded monitoring rules take effect next year. Unity was never a special case. It was one of more than a thousand sites the DEP is working through, the ones where old sludge-spreading licenses now sit under a very different kind of scrutiny.
If you're getting ready to sell a home in Unity, or you're the one making an offer on one, that history matters less for what it proves about any specific property and more for what it reveals about the disclosure form both sides are about to rely on.
What the Disclosure Form Actually Requires
Maine's seller disclosure statute, Title 33, Section 173, is specific about water supply. If a property runs on a private well, the seller has to state the type of system, its location, any known malfunctions, the date of the most recent water test, and whether that test ever came back unsatisfactory. Septic systems get the same treatment: tank type and size, location, installation date, the date of the last servicing, and the name of the contractor who did it.
What the statute does not require is testing. A seller only has to disclose what they already know. If a well has never been tested, the honest and legally sufficient answer is to say so. Maine's disclosure law works on known information, not on an obligation to go find out.
That distinction is easy to skim past. In most towns it barely matters. In Unity, it's the whole story.
Why a Blank Answer and a Clean Answer Aren't the Same Thing
The DEP's PFAS well testing was never a blanket sweep of every property in town. Susanne Miller, who oversees the DEP's PFAS work, has said plainly that the agency is looking at targeted sites, chosen based on proximity to licensed sludge-application land, the direction of groundwater flow, and prior results from nearby wells. Some properties get tested because a neighbor's well came back high. Others sit outside the investigation's boundaries entirely and have never been sampled, not because they're clean, but because they were never in the search area to begin with.
That means two Unity properties can carry an identical disclosure form, water supply type: drilled well, most recent test: none, and represent two completely different risk profiles. One might sit well outside any mapped sludge site with nothing to worry about. The other might be two properties down from a confirmed Depot Street cluster and simply never got tested because the state's sampling radius stopped short of it. The form can't tell a buyer which one they're looking at. Neither can the seller, unless they've actually had the water checked.
This is the piece that's easy to miss if you're comparing Unity to a statewide guide on Maine disclosure law. The law is uniform. The underlying ground is not. A form that says "unknown" is legally airtight everywhere in the state, but in a town with a documented contamination cluster, "unknown" is doing more work than it appears to.
Here's a simple way to think about what each disclosure answer actually tells you, and what it doesn't:
| Disclosure status | What it confirms | What it doesn't confirm |
|---|---|---|
| Tested, results clean | Water met the state standard as of the test date | Whether conditions have changed since, especially near active farmland |
| Tested, elevated, filtration installed | A documented problem with a documented fix | Long-term monitoring costs, which the state's own funding for this program is not guaranteed to cover indefinitely |
| Never tested | Nothing about current water quality | Whether the property sits inside or outside the DEP's active investigation zone |
Why This Matters More in a Slow Market
Unity is a thin market. Listing data from this September shows homes here sitting on the market for a median of 66 days, roughly the same pace as a year ago, with a median list price around $289,000. A town this size doesn't generate enough transactions to smooth out the bumps the way a bigger market can. Every sale carries more individual weight, and every delay is harder to absorb because there's rarely a comparable deal waiting in the wings to keep momentum going.
That's exactly the kind of market where an untested well becomes a scheduling problem, not just a disclosure one. If a buyer's inspector flags the water supply during a standard due diligence period, testing through the state's own Health and Environmental Testing Laboratory in Augusta typically takes about a week to turn results around once the lab receives the sample. A full private panel covering arsenic, bacteria, and other standard concerns runs on a similar timeline through accredited Maine labs. A week is manageable if it happens before a house is listed. It's a lot tighter if it happens during a inspection window with a closing date already on the calendar.
Sellers who test ahead of listing control both the cost and the timeline. Sellers who wait find out what their water contains at the exact moment they have the least leverage to do anything about it.
Before You List: A Short Checklist
- Test before you list, not after an offer comes in. Arsenic testing through the state is free. A basic well panel elsewhere typically runs under a couple hundred dollars and can be scheduled on your own schedule rather than a buyer's.
- Ask whether your parcel sits near a known sludge-application site. If your property is anywhere near Depot Street or the farms along Albion Road, where confirmed spreading occurred, that context is worth having in hand before a buyer's agent brings it up first.
- Pull your septic records. Tank installation date, last servicing, and contractor name are all required disclosures, and having them ready keeps the process moving instead of stalling on a phone call to a contractor from a decade ago.
- Write "unknown" honestly if that's the truth, but understand what it signals. It's legally sufficient. It's also the answer that tells a Unity buyer the least, given what's already been found in this town.
Quick FAQ
Does Maine law require me to test my well before selling? No. The statute requires disclosing what you already know, not conducting new testing.
I've lived here for twenty years and never tested. What do I write? "Unknown" is accurate and legally acceptable if that's genuinely the case. It just won't carry much weight with a buyer who has read about Unity's well testing history.
Who pays for testing if my property is outside the DEP's investigation area? The state's targeted program covers wells identified through its own sampling near licensed sites. Outside that boundary, testing through a private accredited lab or the state's Health and Environmental Testing Laboratory is available to any homeowner, generally at their own cost.
Does an elevated PFAS result kill a sale? Not automatically. Filtration systems are a documented, working fix, and the state has already installed them for affected Depot Street homes. What matters is having the result and a plan in hand before a buyer's financing timeline forces a decision under pressure.
A disclosure form can only report what's been checked. In a town with Unity's specific history, the gap between what's been checked and what hasn't is exactly where deals slow down. If you're weighing a sale here, or evaluating a well as a buyer, Joseph Saltalamachia can walk through what your specific parcel's history actually looks like before it becomes a surprise on someone else's timeline. Let's Connect.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
