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John Krueger of Northport has two degrees in chemical engineering and is a former division director of licensing and enforcement at the Maine Department of Environmental Protection and former director of the State of Maine Health and Environmental Testing Laboratory.
A case now before the Penobscot County court — Penobscot Nation v. Maine Department of Environmental Protection — asks a fundamental question: What does environmental justice mean when the community at risk is a federally recognized Indigenous nation whose identity is inseparable from the river that sustains it? At its core, this case concerns environmental justice — an area that, under modern Environmental Protection Agency protocols, is increasingly narrowed to the point of near disappearance.
The dispute centers on the proposed expansion of the Juniper Ridge Landfill (JRL) in Old Town. The landfill is state‑owned and operated by Casella subsidiary NEWSME, which has intervened alongside the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). The Penobscot Nation is appealing the DEP’s public benefit determination, arguing that the agency’s analysis fails to meet the environmental justice standards required by law.
I believe the DEP’s brief contains striking omissions. It ignores documented cancer disparities, leaves out key contaminants, misstates sustenance‑fishing exposure, substitutes landfill‑to‑landfill comparisons for cumulative burden analysis, and treats PFAS treatment as a cure‑all. Most importantly, it fails to meaningfully address the sovereign rights and cultural continuity of the Penobscot Nation. Environmental justice is not just about pollution levels; it is about who bears the risk, who decides, and what is at stake culturally.
For the Penobscot people, the river is not simply a waterway. It is a relative, a food source, a ceremonial space, and a foundation of identity. This should not be foreign in a society that grants legal personhood to corporations. What is unfamiliar is the refusal to recognize Indigenous relationships to place as legally consequential. Contamination is not only ecological harm — it is cultural harm. It threatens the continuity of a sovereign people whose identity is bound to this river.
To me, the question is not “pollution or no pollution.” It is: How much uncertainty should society impose on a sovereign Indigenous nation when dealing with chemicals that persist for decades and accumulate in fish, sediment, and bodies? PFAS, mercury, PCBs, and dioxins do not disappear. They impair legally protected sustenance‑fishing rights.
NEWSME essentially argues that other towns live near landfills, so the Penobscot Nation should accept this one. I believe that logic erases sovereignty, erases cultural identity, and erases the cumulative industrial burden the Nation has carried for generations.
Environmental justice requires evaluating total load, not isolated facilities. An initial court ruling affirmed that DEP failed to do this. Adding more waste, more leachate, and more uncertainty to an already overburdened watershed is not justice.
DEP’s claim that PFAS treatment will occur only if expansion is approved reveals a deeper flaw. If treatment is necessary to protect the river, it is necessary now. Conditioning overdue protections on accepting more cumulative burden is not environmental justice — I see it as leverage. Communities carrying disproportionate harm should receive immediate risk reduction, not be asked to trade cultural survival for basic safeguards.
A landfill near a town does not necessarily threaten that town’s cultural survival. A landfill discharging into the Penobscot River does. Harm to the river is harm to the Penobscot Nation people themselves.
The recent court conversations underscore that environmental justice cannot be defined by environmental metrics alone. A higher standard integrates cultural integrity and community-defined harm into every decision — elements that fall outside the DEP’s traditional scope. Environmental justice requires a higher standard because it is not measurable in parts per million; measurements cannot speak to what is sacred, irreplaceable, or historically burdened. Cultural survival demands this higher standard. Environmental justice demands this higher standard. I believe Maine must choose a future in which the Penobscot River — and the people who have cared for it for thousands of years — are protected without condition, without expansion, and without further harm.