The owners of a troubled Bucksport landfill that once served the local paper mill want to reopen it to accept mercury-contaminated material dredged up as part of cleanup efforts on the Penobscot River.
But town officials declined on Thursday to even hear the proposal, citing what they see as serious historical harm to the town from American Iron and Metal, the scrap metal company that bought the former Verso Paper mill site in 2015 and acquired the landfill with it.
“It just seems like AIM is just hellbent on making sure this town doesn’t either have water to drink, or that if the water is there to drink, that it’s got crap in it,” Mayor Paul Bissonette said.
The suggestion is the latest chapter in years of bad blood between the town and AIM amid missed deadlines, late reports, deferred maintenance, a lack of information and environmental concerns. It intersects with another major source of industrial contamination in the area, the former HoltraChem plant in Orrington, which discharged at least 6 and up to 12 tons of mercury into the Penobscot River in the late 1960s and early ’70s.
The state ordered the Bucksport landfill two years ago to close after years of dormancy because it found AIM wasn’t meeting the requirements of its licensing, including proof of liability insurance, documentation of regular inspections, water quality testing and maintenance work on parts of its leachate collection system. Part of its north slope had also not been closed for almost a decade, against orders by the town, according to the DEP.
Owners of the HoltraChem plant, meanwhile, were ordered by a judge in 2021 to pay for remediation efforts from the mercury contamination. A trust created from the terms of that consent decree plans to test a method for capping a contaminated area with sand; an application is under state and federal review, program manager Lauri Gorton said Tuesday.
The Penobscot Remediation Trust has “no information” about the landfill, has not been in communication with AIM and will not do any dredging for the cap project, according to Gorton. It plans to study next year where sediment could be dredged and where it would go, she said.
Under its original permit, the Bucksport landfill could only receive certain types of waste generated by its owner onsite. Several years ago, AIM suggested reopening it in partnership with the town to be able to accept general waste but was shot down. It had the potential to bring in more than $3 million for the town, officials estimated at the time, but residents had environmental concerns and other qualms.
More recently, David Bryant, a representative of AIM, had asked to appear before the Bucksport council to present a plan to use the landfill to receive mercury contaminated dredge material from the river remediation effort, Town Manager Jacob Gran said Thursday.
Bryant did not respond to a request for comment.
To accept the contaminated dredge material, AIM would need approval from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. Under Maine’s landfill laws, it would also need to partner with a municipality to reopen the dump.
Gran said he had to present the idea to the Bucksport council to consider, even though he knew it would receive a negative response.
“This is one of the craziest things I’ve ever heard,” resident Don White said during public comment.
Other speakers noted that chemicals from the landfill already leach into the Penobscot River — which is allowed under its current license — and they argued burying dredged material there would simply feed mercury back into the river.
Councilors also suggested that entertaining the proposal could open the door for the current state-mandated closure date for the landfill, Dec. 31, 2026, to be delayed. That closure date was ordered after years of noncompliance issues and frustration at the town level about the landfill’s condition.
The council decided Thursday not to allow AIM to present the new plan.
Members said they believed it was the first time the council had ever refused someone an opportunity to speak to them, but based on the history, they were not interested in hearing from the company.
“We owe it to people not to bring hazardous waste to our town,” Councilor Tracey Hair said. “I don’t even want to hear from them.”
Council members said they doubted any other town would decide to partner with AIM to reopen the landfill for this purpose.