BUCKSPORT, Maine — The No. 8 smoke stack at the former Verso Paper mill came down Tuesday with an explosion that cracked like a gunshot ending an era.
Hundreds gathered on hilltops and at Fort Knox State Historic Site, where 70-year-old Ernie Smith played a wistful song called “Papermakers Lament” on his MacCallum bagpipes.
The razing was the end of one era and the beginning of another, as the 350-foot stack came down as part of site preparation for the construction of a $180 million Atlantic salmon farm and a Maine Maritime Academy adult education annex. Residents said they hope that both will offset the impact of the closing of the Verso mill and the loss of 570 jobs in late 2014. The stack was on a piece of the mill site that will be sold to a New York-based power plant operator if regulators approve the latest property flip performed by mill site owner American Iron and Metal since it purchased the property in 2015.
“It’s bittersweet, but I am very excited for the future,” said Smith, slightly choked up. “I know a lot of the guys who worked at the mill. It was a tight-knit community. Lots of sadness all around. For the mill guys, it was a great living.”
Smith, a Bucksport resident, never worked at the mill, but his father did, as a quality-control supervisor. He remembers his dad going to the mill at all hours, frequently late at night.
Papermaking was a multigenerational task for 90 years in Bucksport, with children succeeding parents and grandparents as they toiled making newsprint and later coated magazine stock. It was hard and often sweltering work, thanks to the steam from the paper machines. The stack served as a chimney for the mill’s No. 8 boiler, one of the mill’s steam makers.
The razing itself was quick. A warning whistle blew twice, minutes before it happened. Then, at precisely 7:55 a.m., the charges exploded. The stack slowly toppled toward the Penobscot River, with dust trailing the top of it and seemingly gaining speed as it fell. Clouds of debris formed around it as the stack crashed to the ground. The dust lingered for several minutes before disappearing.
Eliot Rappaport and his friend, Karen Merritt, said they had to be there.
“Why would you not be? I’ve lived in this area for a long time,” Rappaport said. “There’s a lot connected to the mill and I happened to have the day to come here. It just seemed too interesting.”
Merritt is an environmental engineer who has worked identifying mercury contamination in the Penobscot River released from the former Holtrachem chemical manufacturing site in Orrington, just up the river from Bucksport.
Given her profession it would perhaps be unsurprising if she viewed the mill as a foe, but she said she doesn’t look at it that way.
“Industrial history is part of who we are,” Merritt said after the stack came down. “We have to respect the people who have gotten us where we are.”
And like many in Bucksport, she awaits the salmon farm with curiosity.
“I need to wait and see. I have no problem with it in concept,” Merritt said. “I am curious as to how it will work.”
