March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Orrington working on emergency plan > Residents concerned about plant

ORRINGTON — Residents concerned about the life-threatening results of a chemical mishap at the LCP Chemical Plant here are eager to complete the town’s emergency preparedness plan.

Should an accident or an equipment failure at the plant release deadly chemicals into the environment, residents, in conjunction with the LCP plant, want to be ready to take appropriate action.

Orrington’s board of selectmen voted Monday to hold an informational meeting May 18 at the Center Drive School on the town’s emergency course of action. Members of the town’s Emergency Operations Committee as well as representatives from LCP and the Maine People’s Alliance will attend the meeting. Officials encouraged the public to attend.

Situated on the east bank of the Penobscot River, LCP produces chemicals, chiefly chlorine, to be sold to paper mills and other businesses.

According to the Civil Emergency Preparedness Act, passed in the 1980s, towns are required to prepare a plan that would warn its residents of dangerous incidents such as a chlorine leak at the chemical plant. The plan would include evacuation and sheltering measures.

The plant’s emergency plan has been approved by the Penobscot County Local Emergency Planning Committee, but the town’s plan has not, according to Lynn Coombs, an administration manager at LCP. Coombs added that the chemical plant was willing to merge its plan with the town’s.

The Maine People’s Alliance, an organization dedicated to promoting health and safety, is offering planning advice while helping the town integrate its plan with that of the LCP plant. The alliance plans to show selectmen a short film on industrial hazards and emergency planning.

But Selectmen Robert Littlejohn said that he opposed the “agenda” of the alliance and that he did not want to get involved in it programs. His position drew mild objections from many of the 30 people who attended the selectmen’s meeting and who supported the alliance’s influence in the town’s planning.

“I don’t want to get into the bashing of a business here in town,” Littlejohn said, alluding to the alliance’s claim that LCP should release important information about operations at the plant.

John Dieffenbache-Krall, an alliance spokesman, said that for more than four years the alliance has urged LCP to install an electronic system that would detect a chemical mishap. Such systems are standard in chemical plants across the country, Dieffenbacher-Krall said.

At the moment, according to Dieffenbacher-Krall, LCP’s warning system involves the interaction of workers at the plant. “But these workers might be knocked out” should a so-called chemical release happen, he said.

For the alliance spokesman, the detection system is a “critical issue” that, if combined with the emergency plan, might “prevent a disaster.”

Town Manager Candice Guerett commented that whether LCP or the town would have to pay for the system was uncertain.


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