A Polluted Headache

SANFORD- People like to live in towns that don’t have many “eyesores” and the town members of Sanford feel the same way. The 17-acre former CGA site on New Dam Road has been a dump for many years.

The property has been left in its polluted state for about 20 years. The property was used by a company called Country Gates Arts Inc. and their business was removing copper from computer circuit boards by soaking them in sulfuric acid. When CGA packed up its business and left Sanford it left behind a “two-acre, eight-foot-deep pile of discarded boards and fiberglass” which has just been sitting there for more than 20 years. Underneath the pile the soil is contaminated by the copper and chemicals used in the procedure.

Later in 1995 a man from Freeport, Maine bought the property and ran a recycling business. Due to the polluted state of the property the Department of Environmental protection “sued the man and the former owners and fined them just over $43,000.

One man that has been pushing this clean-up act for more than 20 years is David Bernier whose property is adjacent to the CGA site. Bernier and his mother Theresa have spent far too many years asking for help to clean-up the property. Bernier said “it seems every time I raise the issue it gets attention… It all comes down to money. The town doesn’t have any. It will cost about two million dollars. But we want to move from what can we get to what can we get done with local manpower. I think there is an opportunity to go for some low-hanging fruit here”.

The Bernier family members have a farmer near by and say the building and burnt-out trailer on the CGA site is to close to a drinking water source. The Maine Department of Environmental Protection later wrote to Bernier stating the site does not show any significant public health risk.

Commissioner David P. Littell from DEP stated that there is limited state funding for clean-up and is “currently available only at hazardous substance sites that pose imminent public health threats… DEP has identified 1,500 locations in Maine contaminated with hazardous substances that are known to need clean up or require further investigation into whether clean-up is required”.

Bernier is not giving up hope “after 22 years of letter writing, enough is enough… We no longer want nicely worded letters. We want action, bottom line. We launched a campaign to clean up CGA in 1998, 2000, 2007, and now in 2009/2010. I have moved back to Sanford, and have plenty of energy to keep bugging everyone until the site gets cleaned.”

On February 1, 2010, more than a dozen Sanford residents held a rally pleading; some might say “demanding”, the Sanford Town Council to consider the foreclose of the polluted CGA site. Sanford residents for years now just want the Town or anyone to take ownership of the property and clean it up, finally eliminating the potential treat of this waste land.

The Town Council had already rejected a foreclosure over the property because of the estimated two million dollar cleanup required. Town Manager Mark Green stated that Sanford just doesn’t have the money especially with budget cuts happening. Green later stated “but (the waste) is not moving offsite. There is no leak or anything getting into the groundwater. It does need to get fixed”.

Bernier and the rally putting more pressure on the Town, the Town Council agreed to talk about the matter on February 2. With the vote 4-3 the Town Council decided to take ownership of the CGA site. Town officials stated being in favor of the foreclosure “will make it easier to obtain funding to clean up the property used by CGA”. Councilors Gordon Paul, Kevin Chabot and Alan Walsh and Chairman Joseph Hanslip all voted for the foreclosure of the CGA site.

Environmental Protection Agency has been in contact with the Town of Sanford and is now stating that the town needs a plan for the CGA site before the cleanup funds can be approved. H. Curtis Spalding, regional administrator for EPA Region 1, “suggested that the Town of Sanford needs to determine potential future uses for the 17-acre property and then seek funding sources through the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (U.S. HUD), and other sources that may have funding for redevelopment”.

Some suggested sites for the 17-acre property were a recreation area, baseball fields and maybe a “multiuse building” that could be used for an ice-skating rink.

A clean-up grant from the Brownfields program could help clean the property by partnering with the town but it only qualifies the contaminated soils, not the rest of the trash that would have to be cleaned up first. It is an estimated $343,620 to remove and dispose the computer circuit boards, $524,096 to excavate, transport the contaminated soil where only $200,000 would be funded by the Brownfields grant.

Attention being brought to the CGA site and passionate people like Bernier behind the issue, we should start to see great things for the former CGA property.