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Two Bangor area sites have appeared on a list of the 12 most polluted sites in New England. These are the eighth annual Dirty Dozen Awards, presented by the Toxics Actions Center, which dubiously honor the most environmentally hazardous sites in New England.
The West Old Town Landfill and Griffin Park, a low-income housing complex in Bangor, were the two local sites selected by a 15-member panel of environmental and public health officials from across New England.
Will Everitt, Maine field director of the Toxics Action Center, said the landfill was selected for the award because it threatened the health and safety of nearby residents.
“This is a list nobody wants to be on,” Everitt said as he presented the award during a press conference at the entrance to the landfill.
Residents of Old Town and Alton, the two communities abutting the landfill, began voicing concerns about the landfill when the Georgia-Pacific paper mill in Old Town sold it to the state of Maine earlier this year.
The state of Maine, in turn, granted operation of the site to Casella Waste Systems of Rutland, Vt. Under the terms of the transaction, Casella will pay the state, and the state will in turn pay Georgia-Pacific $12.5 million in cash and $13.5 million in letters of credit, which become payable upon the issuance of an expansion permit, according to Casella.
The expansion is one of the reasons residents are so upset about what they call a “dirty, back-room dump deal.”
Charlie and Debbie Gibbs of Milford founded We the People, a residents’ group formed to stop the landfill expansion.
They claim the state gave Casella an unfair advantage over other buyers by holding private talks with them and including them in talks from the beginning of the deal.
“The state stacked all of the cards in favor of Casella and G.P.,” Debbie Gibbs said. “There was no public participation.”
Everitt said the process of the sale along with the groundwater contamination made the landfill a good site for the award.
“The state, who is supposed to be regulating this, is actually working to get this site pushed through,” he said.
Everitt also said this is one of the few sites he’s seen where the state is siding with the operators and pushing for the deal.
Monitoring wells at the landfill show levels of cadmium, phosphorous and manganese that exceed federal standards, according to the Toxics Action Center. But Don Meagher, Casellla’s manager of planning and development for Maine, said part of those claims just aren’t true.
“I’m a little puzzled that they claim federal standards were exceeded because there’s no federal standard for [phosphorous and manganese],” Meagher said.
Meagher did admit to cadmium being detected at the site but said the first record of the chemical being present around the property was dated in 1992. The landfill didn’t exist until 1996.
If the landfill is expanded as proposed, it will rise more than 300 feet, making it the highest point in Old Town and higher than the landfill in Hampden, which is visible from I-95.
Meagher said the landfill would not be expanded until 2007, following a “very long review process” and “a lot of public meetings.”
But residents are wary of the landfill being expanded and claim that the well testings prove that the landfill is already leaking. They worry an expansion will increase the leaks.
Meagher said the site is an ideal geographic location for the landfill and is in no way leaking.
“The landfill is performing absolutely perfectly,” he said.
Cyndi Darling of the Bangor Department of Environmental Protection office said that while she doesn’t believe perfection exists, it is a well-run landfill. She thinks the angry resident response to the sale of the landfill was to be expected.
“I’ve been doing landfills for almost 20 years now and I’ve never run across one that was not controversial,” Darling said.
This is not the first time Casella has been at the center of controversy in Maine, though.
Casella has been sued twice by the town of Saco, in 2001 and 2002, and once by the town of Biddeford in 2002, all for violations of waste management contracts.
Two sites operated by Casella, the Pine Tree landfill in Hampden and Maine Energy in Biddeford, have also made appearances on the Dirty Dozen list in the past.
Griffin Park, the other local site appearing on the list, was chosen because of the notion that toxic runoff from the Bangor International Airport is polluting the air quality there, according to the Toxics Action Center.
Bangor Daily News