If you manage rental property in Maine and the building runs on a private well, there is a date on your calendar you may not have marked. Maine law has required landlords to test those wells for arsenic since January 1, 2022, and the statute sets the interval at every five years. That means the second cycle comes due by January 1, 2027. Five months out is the right time to plan it, not the week before.
This one catches people. The first round happened during a period when a lot of property changed hands, and the obligation follows the building, not the owner who last ordered a test. If you bought a well-served rental in 2023 or 2024, the clock did not restart for you. It kept running.
What the statute actually says
22 M.R.S. §2660-Y is short, and worth reading in full rather than in summary. Four things in it drive the work:
- A landlord of a residential building must test each private drinking water well for arsenic.
- The obligation began January 1, 2022 and repeats every five years.
- Testing must go through a laboratory certified or accredited pursuant to section 567.
- Results go to every tenant within 10 days of the landlord being notified, and to any new tenant within 10 days as well.
That last point is the one that turns a lab result into a compliance task. The 10-day window starts when you receive the result, not when you get around to reading it. If you order tests across a portfolio and they land at different times, you are managing a set of staggered notification clocks, not one.
Radon sits in a related spot. Under 14 M.R.S. §6030-D, a landlord’s ability to handle certain radon testing internally depends on the private well water having been tested for radon by a person registered under Title 22, chapter 165. Well water and building air are separate questions, and the statute treats them that way.
Where we fit in a property portfolio
Compliance testing is one line item. Most of what actually comes up across a rental portfolio is not statutory, and that is the work we are built for.
Turnover and seasonal bacteria. Maine CDC recommends testing private wells every year for coliform bacteria, E. coli, and nitrates and nitrites, and every three to five years for a broader panel including arsenic, lead, manganese, radon, and uranium. Annual is the operative word. Late summer is when bacteria results move the most, and turnover season stacks on top of it.
Troubleshooting a complaint. A tenant reports odor, staining, or a taste change. That is not a compliance question, it is a diagnostic one, and it usually needs a fast answer rather than a formal one.
Pre-listing and pre-purchase. Before a well-served property changes hands, knowing what is in the water changes the negotiation. See our well water testing and bacteria testing pages for what those panels cover.
What we have learned handling volume
A few things we tell every property manager who starts sending us samples, because they are the ones that trip up otherwise careful people.
Bacteria samples are on a clock. Ours run roughly a 30 hour hold. A sample pulled Friday afternoon and dropped Monday is not a result, it is a wasted kit and a re-collection. Schedule collection against the drop-off, not against the maintenance route.
Collect from the right tap. Sampling after a treatment system tells you the system is working. It does not tell you what is in the well. For a baseline, pull from an untreated tap and note on the chain of custody that you did.
Two wells 300 feet apart can read very differently. Arsenic in Maine is bedrock geology, not neighborhood geography. One unit’s clean result says nothing about the building next door, and it does not satisfy anything for that building either.
Label at the tap. Unit numbers written later, from memory, at the end of a long day, are the single most common source of a result that has to be thrown out.
The practical move this quarter
Pull your portfolio list and sort it by well-served buildings. For each one, find the date of the last arsenic test and count forward five years. Anything landing before or near January 1, 2027 gets scheduled now, with an accredited lab, and a plan for who sends the tenant notice inside 10 days. Anything with no test on record is the urgent one. You can make an informed decision on testing needs at www.mainewellcheck.com.
Then look at the annual items separately, because those are on a different rhythm and they are the ones tenants actually call about.
If you want to talk through how a multi-property testing schedule works, or set up a partner account for ongoing volume, our partner information and partner application pages are the place to start. You can also see current drop-off locations if you want to hand samples over in person rather than ship them.