Coverage of Friends of Penobscot Bay's Toxic Tour of the GAC Shore 7/30/13
Pen Bay Pilot coverage ** Bangor Daily News coverage ** WABI TV Coverage ** WERU Radio Coverage
We held our press conference and public briefing at point (P) on this map. Once the final media showed up, we went down onto the beach and followed the curve of the cove around to the industrialized far side of it. There, the tainted flats and eroding shore wastes, their dispersal into the mud so easily visible from the air also evident from the ground.
We praised GAC Chemical Corp for its present compliance with state and federal environmental laws regarding their their outfall emissions, and for their important contribution to the local and state economy.
But at the same time we urged David Colter, the now-CEO of the company, who has run the Searsport operation so well, to seize the time and deal with mitigating the legacy goop and funk dumped there the last 90 years, as fertilizer and chemical operations rose and fell, each leaving its layer of waste 'down the hill' on the shore!
FOPB is offering GAC a choice: 1. the Carrot of Community Cooperation or 2. the Stick of Agency Enforcement or 3. the Sword of Litigation.
We of course want them to take Door# 1 and work with the people whose parents and grandparents fished, clammed, dug worms and otherwise once made $$ in that harbor. They will join GAC in healing the past injuries GAC's predecessors have made to the shore and intertidal area there.
For the history of the industrial age from the late 1800s to the present day can be seen there. The bluff above the shore is layered like a cake with different colors , along the shore of Stockton harbor from the that built atop each other leaking out of their land into Stockton Harbor.
Worse, the harbor that GAC is leaking into is the very first in a chain of little sub-estuaries of upper Penobscot Bay that the Penobscot River mixes into. Folks used to send their kids to college by digging worms and clams there, there were so many.
Then Governor McKernan's causeway turned Sears Island into the fat end of a mile-long skinny peninsula jutting out from the mainland. Cutting off the circulation between Stockton Harbor and its neighbor sub-estuary Searsport, except by going around the island, into the river flowing past into the bay and into the other harbor. Now the GAC funk doesn't dilute out into the bay with the circulation.
Instead it has concentrated in the inward portion of the intertidal flats right alongside the eroding shore instead of dispersing out into the bay. At least it will be easier to clean up since its in a sort of contained areasection of that cove. Thus removable!
Pen Bay Pilot coverage ** Bangor Daily News coverage ** WABI TV Coverage ** WERU Radio Coverage
We held our press conference and public briefing at point (P) on this map. Once the final media showed up, we went down onto the beach and followed the curve of the cove around to the industrialized far side of it. There, the tainted flats and eroding shore wastes, their dispersal into the mud so easily visible from the air also evident from the ground.
We praised GAC Chemical Corp for its present compliance with state and federal environmental laws regarding their their outfall emissions, and for their important contribution to the local and state economy. But at the same time we urged David Colter, the now-CEO of the company, who has run the Searsport operation so well, to seize the time and deal with mitigating the legacy goop and funk dumped there the last 90 years, as fertilizer and chemical operations rose and fell, each leaving its layer of waste 'down the hill' on the shore!
FOPB is offering GAC a choice: 1. the Carrot of Community Cooperation or 2. the Stick of Agency Enforcement or 3. the Sword of Litigation.
We of course want them to take Door# 1 and work with the people whose parents and grandparents fished, clammed, dug worms and otherwise once made $$ in that harbor. They will join GAC in healing the past injuries GAC's predecessors have made to the shore and intertidal area there.
Worse, the harbor that GAC is leaking into is the very first in a chain of little sub-estuaries of upper Penobscot Bay that the Penobscot River mixes into. Folks used to send their kids to college by digging worms and clams there, there were so many.
Then Governor McKernan's causeway turned Sears Island into the fat end of a mile-long skinny peninsula jutting out from the mainland. Cutting off the circulation between Stockton Harbor and its neighbor sub-estuary Searsport, except by going around the island, into the river flowing past into the bay and into the other harbor. Now the GAC funk doesn't dilute out into the bay with the circulation.
Instead it has concentrated in the inward portion of the intertidal flats right alongside the eroding shore instead of dispersing out into the bay. At least it will be easier to clean up since its in a sort of contained areasection of that cove. Thus removable!
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