SWH selectman seeks accountability for siting of hazardous waste facility

OTHER NEWS: SWH police down to 3 officers

SOUTHWEST HARBOR, Aug. 14, 2024 - Select board member Jim Vallette is turning up the heat in his campaign to stop a household hazardous waste facility from being located here.

On Monday he presented an exhaustive 12-page report of the ground and water pollution near the proposed site from decades of landfill seepage as a cautionary tale. He also continued to challenge the engineering firm siting the facility as being conflicted because of its previous work for the owner of the proposed site, the regional transfer station near Long Pond.

“For more than four decades, Worcester Associates and EMR have hired CES/Haley Ward/SW Cole and Eaton Peabody for services related to its landfill and transfer station operations, including impacts on the local environment and residents’ drinking water,” Vallette wrote. “These impacts have been known since 1980.

“None of this information has been shared in recent history with either body on which I serve: the Select Board and the ADD (Acadia Disposal District). As of the beginning of today’s ADD meeting, Haley Ward still has not informed us about the plumes of PFAS and other pollution from the old landfill that they are monitoring for Worcester Associates and EMR. There has been no information shared about the site closure plan that CES/Haley Ward has been working on since the year 2000, nor the Administrative Consent Agreement that was tentatively going to be finalized last year.”

Vallette went on.

The six-town district “has relied upon the same firms for some crucial decisions. When the ADD was negotiating a contract with EMR on behalf of its member towns between 2007 and 2009, CES/Haley Ward and Eaton Peabody were part of the negotiations. Eaton Peabody also represented a CES geologist whose work for Worcester Associates was later discredited by a board of geologists.

“More recently, CES/Haley Ward, Eaton Peabody, the DEP, Worcester Associates, and the Southwest Harbor Water & Sewer District (which is not part of the Town of Southwest Harbor) have been trying to secure easements to build a water pipeline from the district water plant to residents along Marshall Brook Road. They have not yet succeeded in getting these agreements.”

After his presentation, the district’s board rebuffed his effort to fire Haley Ward in a 3-1 vote, with chair Tony Smith from Mount Desert, Carey Donovan from Tremont and Martha Higgins from Trenton voted to instruct the firm to complete its siting work.

Vallette did win a unanimous affirmation of the board’s previous commitment to consider more sites. So far Southwest Harbor is the only site under consideration.

The board votes are not weighted so that Cranberry Isles and Frenchboro have the same authority as Southwest Harbor. Their members did not attend the meeting Monday.

Vallette’s report covered almost a century of waste disposal practices, starting with the landfill operated by Worcester Associates in the 1930s.

“A state agency has been paying for some of our residents’ drinking water for decades because there are plumes of pollution coming from the uncontrolled closed landfill. Some pollutants are PFAS.  The state says this is ‘clearly having an adverse impact on local groundwater quality. This will continue into the foreseeable future.’

“This ongoing impact on our community traces back to practices that are not the sole responsibility of the private company that operated the landfill. The operations were permitted. A lot of responsibility lies with government and quasi-governmental agencies that have failed to protect the residents of Southwest Harbor. This includes other towns that used it as their dumping grounds for garbage and sewage sludge. This responsibility extends to the state. The DEP allowed the company to mix sewage sludge with household waste, knowing this was an unlined landfill next to a national park, wetlands and our town’s drinking water source. It allowed this to continue for years after knowing it is a source of groundwater contamination. Rather than taking responsibility, the state says it has no funding to remediate. 

“Given the shared responsibilities for the plume, and its proximity to Long Pond and Acadia National Park, funding can be sought from state and federal agencies to complete the closure of the landfill.  Brownfield grants come to mind. Outreach to legislators might be helpful. Potentially, what is now fenced off acreage could become useful again. A hiking and bicycling trail could connect the Marshall Brook trail south of Seal Cove Pond to the Long Pond network. Suitable spaces could be used for other kinds of development. The ADD has a positive role to play in making a good deal happen.

“In the meantime, does the ADD really want to pursue siting a hazardous waste facility in between an uncontrolled landfill and our public water supply?” Vallette wrote.

SWH police to cover two towns with three officers starting next week

SOUTHWEST HARBOR - Starting Monday, police officer James Kamorski will begin an 18-week training at the Maine police academy, leaving this town and Tremont with only three officers.

One officer will work three 24-hour shifts (not back to back), police chief John Hall stated in an email. “The other is working (2) 24 shifts, not back to back and we are splitting the remaining with me working patrol Mondays and Fridays and the rest of the time is broken up into partial shifts.”

On each 24-hour shift, an officer will try and grab six hours of sleep in the station, Hall told the select board Tuesday night.

Hall was summoned to appear at the select board at the request of member Chapin McFarland after the town lost two officers including one who was highly regarded by the community.

The QSJ reported Aug. 7 that Lt. Franklin Burke, the longest serving officer on the force at eight years, resigned to take a job in Ellsworth.

“So we've lost two officers due to burning out and just wanting a better, reliable schedule, better work environment. I would not like to see more officers be lost that way,” McFarland said.

He added concern about the officers’ work life balance “and the home life which is drastically affected when they are gone 24 hours.”

Another officer is scheduled for academy training in January.

Hall said he is hoping to fill at least one of the two existing openings by September.

Here was Carrie Jones’s account of the meeting Tuesday night in the Bar Harbor Story.