1998 video investigation of Stockton Harbor's Kidder Point waste & pollution sites. Index

1998 video investigation & cleanup  of Stockton Harbor's Kidder Point waste & pollution sites.    Index and video 

Download this video  2hrs, 20minutes long   https://penbay.org/baytowns/searsport/gac_1998/gac_1998_a_022098_waste_erosion_b_040798_cleanup.avi   (may take 45 mins to download)

PART 1.  52min 32sec  February 20 1998 investigation of wastefilled  shore and intertidal mud 55 Minutes Penobscot Bay Watch site investigation. Will Neils, videographer.     NOTE: Part 1 starts after 53 seconds of blank

PART 2   1hr 20min   April 7m, 1998  We discover waste problems in an outfall and a nearby seawater  intake out take pipeline bldg.  DEP orders Clean Harbors to clean it up   We witness that and chat wiith various officials       

PART 1 

START AT 53sec  Driving to Searsport

55sec  Panorama show of Stockton Harbor - no condos on Cape Jellison.

2:18  More panoramas of the facility   One notes the large wooden quonset structures

2:52 Closer in to old acid and superphosphate plant

4:00  Layered filled area near base of point on east side. Notes how far along bank the wooden fill corrals  extend (all the way to in front of the acid plant)

4:55 closer up up water dripping against exposed fill 

5:50  Closeup of another nearby dripping waste slump. 

6:50  Eroding slope  below the acid plant itself.

7:32 Slope 

8:11 osprey...Flats at the tip of the point. Old wooden  superphosphate plant quonset

9:41 outfall piles 

10:17 view to abandoned pumphouse outfall & oily sump. Aerial photos of illegal discharge

11:33 closeup of old superphosphate  wooden plant.  Elevated insulated pipelines from offshore point

12:30 Wooden chimney structure. Scan of the wooden structure then to shore below with artificial filled shoreline

13:22 Closeup eroding pipeline to old pumphouse, then filled shoreline from there to cistern full of oily waste.  We go and examine it.

14:01 Cistern waterfilled. See  top of outfall pipe into the cistern. Probe cistern catch basin: full of oily goo. 

15:53  Old electric junk including transformer View out to rail line with landfill beyond track  Scan around back of existing working plant  and to old superphosphate plant 

17:00 scan superphosphate plant

17:20 Approach old pumphouse

17:55  Down stairs to floor with hatches to bay    Examine hatches and outfall pipes

19:19 Examine oil spigot allowing oil to be discharged into bay .

20:51  Climb out of pumphouse

21:46. Examine a test well near abandoned superphosphate plant

22:51  Observe gust of black smoke from a facility

23: 10  View from the GAC landfill

24:13 View from top of landfill

25:44 Sulfuric acid tank warnings

26:25  Railside acid warnings. walk toward acid plant and superphosphate plant.

PART 2  March 5.  TIDAL FLATS adjacent to Kidder's Point   

27:55   March 5th GAC tidal flats exploration

28:07 Herb Hoche digs test squares,   Dead clams

29:03 Ron discusses clam mystery with Stockton Harbor background

30:29  Herb Hoche digs another site

32:45 Another dig

35:18 Another dig

38:35 Another sample "much closer to the plant"

39:44 Hoche discovers buried tarpaper from roof  of old wooden factory 

43:37  Another dig.  4527   "Our braintrust goes to work."  observes Will Neils.

45:54  Another dig  4944 note dig is in flow of waste

50:21 Examining  discolored mud, with flocculants on top. Hoche  digs, reveals multicolored layers of intertidal mud.  The adjoining shore where a broad reddish band of  leachate is seeping along a layer of clay downslope to upwell there the intertidal gravel and sand meet the mudflats ..  Hoche dabs the flocculants at several places along the red leachate 

52:40 Hoche  clamdigging in the discolored area Red layer, then an alum silver layer. then another  red Examine the mud there for signs of life; none.

54:05 Closeup of contaminated mud

54:20  Camera investigates the land adjacent to the acid plant

54:53 Top of  ditch running tainted water to the har4bor 

Part 3

56:24 At the old pumphouse again. The Cleanup crew is there at work on cistern

58:28 Ron sums up situation

59:40 Hoche examines seaweed in driftwood

60:03  Cleanup workers. Viewed from the beach - private property rights.   Pans down to  brook adjacent to site.  Herb Hoche  rinses hands in the stream.

63:00  DEP staffer Clarissa Trasko brings straw to below cistern  Goes uphill returns below discusses plan The big suction hose. more A DEP oilspill guy shows up we chat a bit.

71:30 Ron chats with  DEP official Clarissa Trasko at base of cistern.

76:00 2 Coast Guardsmen  arrive  discusses issue with Ron Huber He thanks them for convincing  the company to clean this up  talk ends at 83min

83:00  Suction hose underway

87:00 Officials congregate to watch from front of cistern

88:00 Suction starts up again.

88:38  Surface water removed by suction revealing the massive amount of oily goo there. 

1:29:50  cleanup guy gets suitedup. 

1:31 cleanup guy continues 

1:32 test samples collected, snuck away by company official 

1:33 View into cistern

1:35:45 View of cistern with cleaner guy inside

1:36  See outfall choked with waste 

1:36:50 Guy in protective suit in front end of cistern

1:42:10  See old junk boards that were burried in the muck.  he scrapes muck off them

1:47 Protective suit climbs out. A lengthy cleaning process for suit removal finally  removes his bootcovers, bags it all up and leaves

1:53 Inside of outfall half full 

1:54 Huber reviews the situation

PART 4

1:55:13   BACK TO PUMPHOUSE

1:56 Funky water alongside rail line. 

1:58:40 along rail line

2:00 Return to cleaned up cistern new wooden front, sheeny water...

2:02  Huber grabs muck sample

2:03:55 brook that goes to bay near the cistern b probed with a stick

2:04:40  Approach pumphouse 

2:05:30  Oil dump barrel is gone. Floor cleaned up. The oily glove still there.

2:08 Old lagoon alongside rail line

2:09 Panorama shot

2:11 Clean Harbors pumptruck

2:11:51  Steam cranes at Searsport  Clean Harbors is there, too  

END

MDEP pollution team postpones GAC shore inspection FOR THIRD TIME.

Curiouser and curiouser....
Our Friday visit to Maine DEP's Bangor office to look at the pollution history of GAC Chemical  and polluters past on Kidder Point  had its highs and its lows.

The bad news: The agency has for the third time cancelled its site visit to examine GAC's shore in light of our complaints.  A sudden scheduling conflict; the field investigative team is needed elsewhere.  Improbable, given the number of times the agency visit to this polluted site has already been delayed. Did our unexpected introduction of the fertilizer waste problem into the Kidder Point cleanup discussion freak DEP out?

Was this a political postponement of the investigation? I.e. did a call from the head of "Maine's Chemical Company" to Governor Lepage lead to ruthlessly pro-industry Patty Aho Commissioner being tasked to throttle back  her employees' rush to examine that polluted shore? One wonders.  Meetings with the top GAC guy David Colter started well, too but petered out over the course of the year into canceled meetings and postponed cleanup plans.

The good news: We got access to about a thousand pages of well organized documents, charts, maps etc from two sub-bureaus, solid waste and remediation (polluted sites cleanup). The two officials that greeted us were professional and helpful.  Split among four of us, and a patient DEP receptionist/copy machine operator, we extracted about 180 pages of maps, charts, core sample data, pollution evaluations, enforcement letters/ replies and more. These will appear on the Friends of Penobscot Bay website as they get digitized.

The missing news: We saw DEP's attention was on the top layers of  alum production waste laid down after fertilizer production shut down in 1970.  But where did the 11 million tons of chemical waste from  fifty years of  fertilizer production on Kidder Point and Mack Point go?

Made by sulfuric acid drenching of phosphate ore, every ton of  superphosphate leaves five tons of  useless, unhealthily radioactive and highly acidic waste "phosphogypsum" behind.  Phosphogypsum (PG) is a problem powdery waste. Too much radium, uranium and radon for use in inhabited areas, according to US EPA. But every day more thousands of tons are produced around the world. So  much that  it is piled in enormous stacked  pyramids around the world, some of them visible from outer space  thanks to our fertilizer-using planetary civilization.

Searsport's fertilizer's  main market was the state's potato farms. Phosphate ore and sulfur arrived at Mack Point by ship; fertilizer went from Searsport to the tater-growing County by rail. Potatoes came back down the rail to Searsport for export.

Kidder Point & Mack Point both hosted a series of fertilizer companies:

1907 American Agricultural Chemical Company built plant and pier. Mack Pt
1907-1914 B&A RR runs electric power plant on Kidder Point  for AACC, etc.
1909  Hubbard (later Armour) Fertilizer sets up  Mack Pt
1919 Summers Fertilizer  Kidder Pt
1944 Northern Chemical Kidder Point
1966 W.R. Grace  Kidder Pt
1970 Delta Chemical  Kidder Pt
1994 to present: General Alum and Chemical(GAC)  Kidder Point

Superphosphate was made there. Lots of it.
In 1962 alone, Searsport would have generated 225,000 tons of waste while making 45,000 tons of superphosphate. Where is it?  Over fifty years, around 11 million tons of phosphogypsum would have been discarded in Searsport. Where is that? 

It is logical that the abovementioned  companies would deposit this toxic material nearby as possible.  It is most likely lining Kidder Point, Mack Point and even Sears Island  and was probably dumped into abandoned quarries like those in Northport. The amount of postponing by both the company and by MDEP suggests something is wrong on the shores of Stockton Harbor.

GAC Chemical and  Maine DEP would do better to speedily investigate the site and get the necessary remediation done and over with. Stockton Harbor, with its entrance only yards from the mouth of Penobscot River, is a very important part of Penobscot Bay's estuary system. A century of waste deposition and spillage into it from Kidder Point is a legacy that must be confronted and dealt with.

Time to  get the site investigation rescheduled AGAIN.