Officials with the state and the town of Warren continue to map a strategy for cleaning up the rifle range off Route 90 that was turned into a massive illegal waste site in the 1990s.
On Nov. 6, representatives from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection’s Land Bureau and the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife visited the site with town officials.
Town Manager Sherry Howard said the visit was to review existing wetlands and natural resources on the property and discuss how the proposed cleanup and potential redevelopment activities may affect these environmental features.
“This coordination is an important part of the planning process, helping the project team identify environmental considerations and applicable permitting requirements as cleanup plans continue to develop,” the town stated in a notice to residents on its website.
The town was notified in May 2025 that it will receive a $4 million Brownfields grant to help in the cleanup of the estimated 27,000 tons of waste.
Howard said the town hopes to begin a community engagement in the next month to hear from residents about what they want done with the property.
“We’re still in the ideas mode,” the manager said.
The money will be used to clean up the former Steamship Navigation Site at 2287 Camden Road (Route 90). The 71-acre site had been used for multiple purposes including a firing range, firearms retail store, and photographic laboratory. The site has been vacant and unused since the 1990s and is contaminated with metals and inorganic contaminants. Grant funds also will be used to support community engagement activities, according to the EPA in its news release.
In 1997, Chester and Kathleen Dunican bought land off Route 90 in Warren under the corporate name of Steamship Navigation Co. The property had been the Oyster River Rifle Range, used for many years, including by local police departments for training.
In meetings with the Warren Planning Board in 1997, Dunican said the rifle range would become the largest on the East Coast. His plans called for a new retail store, a new lodge for club members and a 7,000-square-foot indoor shooting range. He said the range would create many new jobs for local residents.
Dunican said, however, it needed to accept polyester fiber scraps from the former Gates Formed-Fibre Products Inc. of Auburn to create berms for the rifle range.
The Dunicans were paid an estimated $1 million from Gates Formed-Fibre to accept the material that had been largely used as linings for the trunks of motor vehicles. Opponents to the range questioned whether the owners were simply using the property as an unlicensed dump to make money by accepting the material.
The owners abandoned the property after accepting more than 27,000 tons of waste, leaving the property covered with huge mounds of uncovered materials as far as the eye can see. The plans for the massive rifle range did not materialize. The owners failed to pay their property taxes, which forced residents to vote each year for the past 23 years on whether to foreclose on the property. The town had balked at foreclosing on the property out of concern of being liable for the environmental cleanup.
On Dec. 7, 2022, Warren residents finally agreed to foreclose and take ownership of the land after reaching an agreement with the Maine DEP that the town would not be liable.
The town and Maine Department of Environmental Protection had tried several projects that would reuse the material including being burned at the Dragon cement plant in nearby Thomaston. The Penobscot Energy Recovery Co. trash incinerator in Orrington had also considered accepting the wastes but that did not come to pass. A Massachusetts company also had considered using the material to manufacture composite materials, but the expense was exorbitant and the proposal was dropped.
This story appears through a media partnership with Midcoast Villager.