It is hilarious to watch GAC Chemical and its DEP apologists assuring us not to worry about whats coming off the GAC Chemical Corps shoreline property - because the present owners keeps its production wastes more or less within the limits of its license. Its funny because it is a classic effort to divert attention away from what actually concerns the Friends of Penobscot Bay What is it that the company and DEP regional director Susanne Miller, Patty Ahos pick to run the eastern Maine branch of the DEP, are so determinedly playing down or indeed, skipping over? Why, the thousands of tons of sulphuric acid wastes , phosphogypsum and bauxite wastes pumped behind wooden corrals along nearly a mile of the Stockton Harbor shoreline. Oh. That waste. So much was dumped there between 1940 and 1970 by fertilizer producers W.R. Grace, Northern Chemical and Summers Chemical, that they greatly expanded the size of the Point.. While the phosphogypsum and bauxite wastes _by themselves_ dont trigger a superfund cleanup, they DO when more than 1,000 pounds of sulfuric acid is released into them by spills or dumping and a leachate strong enough to affect the ecosystem is created and enters that ecosystem. . * Between 18,000 and 30,000 pounds of sulfuric acid was released and drained into these phosphogypsum wastes in three 1980s spills by GAC Chemicals immediate predecessor on the site Delta Chemical,. * Leacheates meeting the acid strength necessary to trigger a Federal Superfund cleanup have been mapped, tested and verified by DEP officials (pre-Lepage administration). This year, eminent ocean acidification researcher Dr Mark Green of Saint Josephs College affirmed those earlier studies with nearly identifical pH findings as those found in the beach and tidal flats off Kidder Point in the mid 1980s. The depauperate ecosystem at the site is well known and documented by DEP. What this suggests is that the sulfuric acid spilled at Kidder Point has been absorbed by the fertilizer waste piled up alongshore and will continue to leach out into the harbor for decades And as has been shown at other abandoned phosphogypsum waste sites, this acid may be liberating chromium, cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc, arsenic, selenium, silver, cadmium, antimony, mercury, thallium, lead, uranium and radium into Stockton Harbor. In addition the petroleum wastes generated by the companies machine shops and truck and auto maintenance yards, over those 90 odd years since fertilizer production began were either mixed into the fertilizer waste, buried in adhoc pits nearby or consolidated into landfills on the west site of the site. Also of interest are wastes from an 1907-1914 power plant onsite that lit up neighboring Mack Points docks and warehouses with arc lamps, So while the Lepage administrations hirelings are singing GAC Chemicals praises t the top of their lungs for its current operations, they cannot muffle the Acid Rock being performed ever louder and louder by the Ghost of Industry Past.
Posted on: Thu, 26 Jun 2014 01:20:55 +0000
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