WASHBURN — When a polychlorinated biphenyl spill was reported almost 10 years ago, officials of Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection said it would dispose of several yards of “soaked ground” for $500 to $3,000.

The federal government apparently had no funds to clean up small toxic spills.

That was before the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund money was made available.

Town Manager Sheldon Richardson said Thursday that an estimated $1 million might have been spent, mostly from the Superfund, in combating less than an acre of soil contamination at Pinette’s salvage yard.

Officials studying the site, off Gardner Creek Road, said it might cost the Superfund $6 million before the contamination case was closed.

EPA officials planned a “home-stretch” cleanup effort next spring after years of studies and partial cleanup of the “medium-size” spill.

“The EPA expects no fewer than three to four years will be required to remediate the (area’s) ground water back to drinking-water quality,” the agency said this week in a Superfund update.

No illnesses have been traced to the PCBs, and no private drinking-water wells near the site are affected, an EPA spokesman said.

“The spill is off the beaten path and apparently poses no danger,” said Richardson. “There’s some lateral leakage underground toward the Aroostook River. Fortunately a lot of clay has contained it. The danger is PCBs last thousands of years and don’t disintegrate. There’s no way of knowing how much ground water is contaminated. Parts per million here are very high. Allowable limits are small.”

The PCBs came from some electrical transformers allegedly dumped at Pinette’s in June 1979.

The EPA said surface soil cleanup activities next spring would include excavating, dewatering, treating and transporting off-site for incineration any soil contaminated with “50 or greater parts per million” of PCBs.

Soil contaminated with greater than 50 ppm PCBs will be put in a staging area to drain excess water. Afterward, the soil, an estimated 360 cubic yards, will be transported by federally licensed trucks to a federally approved incinerator outside New England.