HOWLAND, Maine — A Brewer firm will help Howland to relocate the town transfer station and to get environmental permits to remove fill from the former tannery site, officials said Tuesday.
The Board of Selectmen voted 4-0 during a special meeting on Monday to pay as much as $47,000 to CES Inc. of Brewer to handle the permitting immediately and to engineer the relocation within the next two years, interim Town Manager Peggy Daigle said. Selectmen Michael Harris, a local contractor, abstained from the vote.
“They have been on this project since day one,” Daigle said Tuesday of CES. “It will be nice to see that property get cleared of [fill] so the town of Howland can do something useful with it.”
Town officials declared the revitalization of the town-owned site a priority about five years ago. Once home to the town’s largest single employer, the property has been dormant since the 1990s despite its access to Route 155, Interstate 95 and the Piscataquis and Penobscot rivers.
Its rebirth will be greatly aided, town officials have said, with the completion of a $3.2 million fish bypass on Penobscot River Restoration Trust land adjacent to the parcel. Town officials reworked an agreement with Penobscot River Restoration Trust last month to allow their contractor to relocate the fill to a town property on Lagoon Lane, where the transfer station will go.
Selectmen said the huge piles of concrete, dirt and other materials were an eyesore, potential environmental liability and an impediment to the property’s marketing. The removal of some fill was expected to begin Tuesday.
CES will apply to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection for a beneficial use permit to move the fill. The board opted to forego seeking competitive bids for the work because selectmen want the work done quickly.
With Harris again abstaining, selectmen also voted 4-0 to allow the project’s lead contractor to hire a bulldozer crew to begin working with the fill. According to the motion they approved, the work is not to cost more than $20,000.