Toxic Tour of the GAC Shore 7/30/13 MEDIA COVERAGE

Coverage of Friends of Penobscot Bay's Toxic Tour of the GAC Shore 7/30/13
  
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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!

Waterfront waste dump tour of GAC Chemical Corp's shorefront NOON on TUESDAY

On Tuesday July 30th at 12 noon, advocacy group Friends of Penobscot Bay will host a press conference and tour of the contaminated Stockton Harbor shoreline beneath GAC Chemical Corporation. 

All are welcome! Wear footwear that can get a bit muddy. 

Take the Sears Island Road, from Route 1 Searsport to the parking area on the left near the mainland end of the Sears Island causeway.

See image of where to park and where to go (sandbar in this aerial photo)

The Friends of Penobscot Bay hope to bring journalists and the interested public across a small cove via a sandbar, to where they can see, close up, the company's polluted muds, its debris-filled waterfront, including eroding  shoreline waste dumps, and tainted clamflats, a tottering abandoned pipeline, a crumbling abandoned pumphouse  and ceramic waste littering a beach. 

The Friends of Penobscot Bay group wants GAC to trim back and revegetate shorelines that are eroding mid 20th century wastes into the harbor, or are on the verge of doing so. (DMRrecommended this in 1998) It is also asking the company to demolish and remove a long-abandoned factory and chemical tank perched above the shore of Stockton harbor and clean up the soils underneath them.

Aerial photos taken recently by Friends of Penobscot Bay strongly suggest that wastes are leaking underground from the derelict facility, into the intertidal mud and moving through the harbor's intertidal flats. 

GAC manufactures a variety of chemicals, including ammonium sulfate used in pharmaceuticals and foods to alum, sodium aluminate, aqua ammonia and sodium hypochlorite.  Additionally, GAC Chemical distributes "sulfuric acid, specialty flocculants and coagulants", and creates "custom blends of various fertilizer chemicals."

"The current operator of GAC Chemical is doing a great job keeping their present operationswell within their discharge license limits," said Friends of Penobscot Bay executive director Ron Huber. "They are an example of responsible industrial manufacturing, and deserve their slogan "Maine's Chemical Company".

"But because earlier companies on the the site in the twentieth century thoughtlessly dumped 100s of tons of industrial wastes on the shore, GAC Chemical's property is  today eroding and leaking these wastes into Penobscot Bay. "

This has got to stop." Huber said.

The bay conservation group says the company's mile long shore received sustantial deposits of acidic bauxite ore, sulfur, carbon and other waste materials as a succession of fertilizer and chemical companies came and went on the Kidder Point site in the middle and  late 20th Century.  See a 1998 letter and a chart by former GAC plant operator Alex Horth  to Maine DEP, describing shoreline waste depositions  from 1939 to 1970.

"This stuff is from businesses that proceeded GAC Chemical on Kidder Point," said Harlan McLaughlin, president of the Friends group.   "Plant operator David Colter doesn't allow wastes to be dumped on the shore.  But the company knew the wastes were there when it bought the property from Delta Chemical," he said.  "GAC owns the eroding waste dumps and abandoned buildings that right now are polluting Stockton Harbor."

"We think that Mr. Colter is up to the challenge," said Huber.  He's shown a willingness to listen to our concerns and hire an environmental consultant, but a year of multiple missed deadlines has passed since he first promised to fix GAC's eroding shores. Nothing has happened." 

We are calling on him to honor his agreement and put an end to the polluting of Stockton Harbor by legacy wastes on his company's property.  We know he's a busy man, but Penobscot Bay needs a clean estuary to grow the fish & shellfish that should be filling it.   Putting an end of waste erosion  here will make a difference."

Huber said he hopes that GAC Chemical's David Colter will come out and speak with the people and media at the noon  press conference on Tuesday.