SEARSPORT, Maine — A scrap metal recycling company that would like to stockpile and export material at the Mack Point industrial zone received conditional approval from the Searsport Planning Board this week.
Although Topsham-based Grimmel Industries LLC, has indicated it would like to get going soon in Searsport, according to planning board Chair Bruce Probert, it cannot until the Maine Department of Environmental Protection weighs in on its plan. Grimmel will lease a 2.25 acre concrete pad from Sprague Energy, and that is the company that ultimately will be responsible for potential issues with surface water discharge, air emissions, etc., Probert said.
“This is all within Sprague’s boundaries,” the chairman said.
Some in the midcoast area who oppose the company moving to Searsport have pointed out that Grimmel had significant environmental problems during the 12 years it operated a similar facility in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In 2011, the company was issued a citation from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which sought half a million dollars in penalties for discharging polluted stormwater into the Piscataqua River.
In 2014, the board of directors of the Market Street Terminal in Portsmouth decided not to extend the contract with Grimmel, which had until Dec. 31 to leave the facility.
Brian Rayback, an attorney representing Grimmel, told the Searsport Planning Board at a public meeting in late January that during the years the company operated in New Hampshire, it spent a half-billion dollars on operating the business — including buying scrap metal, meeting payroll and hiring ships to export the scrap overseas.
Efforts Wednesday to speak with someone from Grimmel were unsuccessful.
Tom Gocze, a Searsport resident who has opposed his town’s issuing a junkyard permit to the Topsham firm, said Wednesday that he does not want to be considered a person who always says no to projects that want to come to Searsport.
“But we have a business with a track record that isn’t stellar,” he said. “There certainly are some environmental concerns. I’m worried that we’re perceived as being so desperate for jobs we’ll take anything. At this point, I think it’s going to go through, and we want to have conditions in place to make sure we don’t wind up like Portsmouth. My fear is that we’re going to end up being exactly like Portsmouth.”
Probert said the planning board needed to decide if Grimmel’s application met the town’s land use ordinance for a junkyard.
“We had a lot of stuff come at us related to Portsmouth,” he said. “We had to separate that out. This is a Searsport site. This is a Searsport application.”
According to that application, Grimmel specified that anywhere from 10 to 50 trucks per day loaded with scrap iron would come to the Mack Point site and unload onto the concrete pad. The pile of scrap could reach as high as 50 feet, the firm said. Probert said that is the height of the existing tanks at the Sprague Energy tank farm and shorter than some piles of road salt that are stored there.
Although some opponents have cited their concerns about increased truck traffic as a reason to say no to the project, Probert said that a lot of trucks go in and out of Mack Point every day. In the winter, as many as 150 trucks per day can come through to get loads of road salt, he said.
“No one complains about that,” he said.
One of the conditions the town has placed on the application is that it has asked Grimmel to do a magnetic sweep of the berth after vessels leave in order to ascertain that scrap metal wasn’t dropped in the water. The planning board also has specified that the business can operate from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., and if there are vessels to be loaded, they can work until 7 p.m. Grimmel said in the application it would like to see a vessel come in once per month to fill up with a load of scrap metal for export.
Gocze said he has some “healthy skepticism” about what the company says it will do and what will actually happen.
“We’re talking about a couple of jobs, but a lot of potential negatives,” he said. “We don’t want to be the people who say no — but we do live in the town.”
Probert said that hearing from opponents has been helpful.
“They brought up good points,” he said. “Our job is to make sure the town gets protected, and that companies have the financial capacity to finish the projects they start.”