Hazardous waste cleanup program must be funded

Copyright © 2006 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

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Several years ago, the Wolman Steel site in Waterville -- an abandoned industrial facility which turned out to be home to hazardous waste that threatened public health -- couldn't be cleaned up because there was no one to foot the $1.35 million cleanup bill. The soils at Wolman Steel contained toxic PCBs; state tests showed that backyards adjacent to the former steel manufacturer also contained hot spots of chemical and metal contaminants. The site was also near an elementary school.

Unfortunately, a similar situation has emerged at the Augusta Tissue Mill alongside the Kennebec River in Augusta.

The Augusta mill has been owned by a succession of companies since its heyday as the Statler Tissue Mill. Now, its virtually abandoned main site, as well as a separate sludge disposal site in Augusta, have been identified by the state as potential environmental disasters. At the paper mill site, state regulators say the last owners have failed to remove substantial amounts of hazardous wastes, including thousands of gallons of acids and flammable liquids; at the sludge site, they have failed to grade or cover the paper mill waste so now it's leaking into nearby Riggs Brook. One lawyer in the state attorney general's office says he wouldn't be surprised if there's groundwater contamination at the Kennebec River mill.

And so far as state regulators can see, there's no money to pay for cleanup at the Augusta Tissue Mill. The mill's previous owners have failed to even respond to a state lawsuit demanding cleanup of the site.

There is a state fund, administered by the Department of Environmental Protection, that could be used to pay for such emergency cleanups. The Legislature wisely chose to establish the Uncontrolled Hazardous Sites Program on the premise that waiting to clean up a hazardous waste site until a responsible party came forth with the money could endanger both public health and the environment.

The program is essentially the state's equivalent of the federal Superfund program and has been used to clean up tanneries and woolen mills and other former industrial sites polluted by hazardous waste. The state's program has historically been funded by environmental bonds; it was used to pay for remediation at numerous sites across the state where the cleanup urgency outpaced the state's ability to find responsible parties that would ante up.

But that program's funds have been almost used up and no bond has been passed to replenish them. When it was run down to its last dollars, lawmakers were literally forced to choose between conducting one environmental cleanup over another.

So, in the case of Wolman Steel, cleanup couldn't start until Gov. John Baldacci and the Legislature found money to deal specifically with the problem. That's not exactly a recipe for the kind of prompt action that needs to be taken with an environmental time bomb. And with the Augusta Tissue Mill's polluted main site, which sits next to the Kennebec River, there is real urgency to the cleanup need. The Kennebec has been the beneficiary of millions of federal, state and private dollars in environmental restoration and redevelopment funds up and down the river over the last decade; pollution from the mill could significantly set back those efforts.

The state Legislature must get beyond the knee-jerk anti-bond rhetoric that has characterized recent sessions and appreciate that there are some situations that demand state action in the name of public and environmental safety. The Augusta Tissue Mill is one of them. We cannot substitute erecting chain link fences -- as has been done at far too many hazardous waste sites across the state -- for meaningful environmental cleanup efforts. And indeed, there's not a chain link fence in the world that can stop groundwater contamination from happening, or a river from being polluted.