Oil cleanup costs borne by small business owners

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Twenty years ago, the state advised car dealers and garage owners like Dale Whitney to use Portland-Bangor Waste Oil Co. to get rid of their dirty oil.

Now the Machias man and hundreds of others have been told by the federal Environmental Protection Agency that they must pay thousands of dollars or risk having all their assets seized because they followed that advice.

The oil went to a disposal site in mid-Maine and now it is part of an $8 million Superfund site.

There’s no doubt that the contaminated soil and water at the Hows Corner Superfund site in Plymouth needs to be cleaned up.

But forcing people — many of them now in retirement, who legally had waste oil dumped at the site — to pay the $8 million that has already been spent on cleanup seems patently unfair to many being asked to write checks to the federal government.

“There’s no point in being an entrepreneur, in creating jobs … in paying taxes, because in the end, the government will take it all away,” said Whitney, 64, who used to own a car dealership that performed oil changes.

Whitney is also in the blueberry growing business and he has been told by EPA that he must pay $13,575 for his share of the cleanup.

Whitney is especially incensed because, he said Sunday, he never sold waste oil to the Portland-Bangor Waste Oil Co., which disposed of the dirty oil in Plymouth and another site in Wells that has already been cleaned up.

His family used the dirty oil from the dealership to fire the blueberry burners used to set fire to the barrens each season.

Whitney and others identified by EPA as being responsible for the waste oil that ended up at Hows Corner have been invited to meet with agency officials in Bangor today.

The public and media are barred from attending the meeting at the University College Center. Representatives of the agency will be on hand to discuss a proposed agreement that is meant to settle payment issues surrounding the first phase of cleanup at the 17-acre site off Route 7.

Those who agree to sign the agreement must pay an amount for cleanup based on the amount of oil EPA believes they paid to have dumped at the site. Last week, the EPA extended until Sept. 22 the date for signing the agreement.

Those who do not sign the agreement may be sued by the agency to recoup the money it spent to clean up the site where a company owned by George West dumped waste oil from 1965 to 1980.

West has been declared unable to pay for the removal of 847 tons of soil and installation of a new water supply system in 1995. So EPA has turned its attention to those who sold their waste oil to West to recoup the $8 million.

This is especially irksome to former garage owners and lawmakers because what they did was legal at the time — and, in fact, the state Department of Environmental Protection advised people to use West’s company to dispose of their waste oil. The state environmental agency, as well as four other state and five federal agencies, used West’s company to dispose of its waste oil.

A group of rural lawmakers intends to show up at the meeting today to encourage people not to sign anything until the state and federal governments see if they can offer assistance.

“My [advice] will be, `Don’t sign nothing, don’t agree to nothing. Give us time to do something,”‘ said Rep. Albion Goodwin, D-Pembroke, secretary of the Rural Caucus, a recently formed group of lawmakers that now has 54 members.

The group has scheduled a meeting for Aug. 29 at which it hopes members of Maine’s congressional delegation, EPA and DEP will be available to answer questions about the proposed settlement. That meeting is scheduled for 10 a.m. Tuesday, Aug. 29, in the Appropriations Committee meeting room in the State House in Augusta.

Lawmakers last year passed a measure making no-interest loans available to those who pay EPA to settle a matter. EPA is also making an installment payment plan available with the agreement.

Considering that EPA is going after people who legally disposed of waste oil, the settlement offer is better than it could have been, said David Littell, a Portland lawyer who works with 98 parties that have been identified by EPA as responsible for disposing of oil at the Plymouth site.

“It’s a good compromise, although no one thinks they should pay,” Littell said Friday.

The agency has been able to identify and work with the parties responsible for about 40 percent of the total amount of waste oil dumped at Hows Corner. Initially, the agency tried to make those parties cover the cost of the entire cleanup.

Under the current settlement offer, the agency agrees to cover the cost of the so-called “orphan’s share” — the 60 percent that should be paid by parties the agency was not able to identify.

“The Superfund law is good at getting sites cleaned up,” said Littell. But when it comes to assessing costs for that cleanup, the law is “incredibly unfair,” he said.

In addition, Littell said, he doesn’t believe EPA has identified the parties that are really responsible for the contamination at Hows Corner. He said studies of the site have found contamination that is not consistent with the disposal of waste oil. So either West accepted waste products other than waste oil and is not being straight with EPA or someone came onto the site and dumped materials without his knowing it, Littell said.

But the Superfund law is so strongly in favor of EPA that the agency doesn’t have to prove a person is responsible for contaminating a site in order to hold that person liable for the costs of cleanup. The agency must simply show that a person gave materials to West’s company for disposal and that there was in fact contamination at the site where the material was dumped.

The groups Littell works with are trying to determine if additional cleanup is needed at Hows Corner. If there is additional remediation necessary, the costs of that cleanup would be allocated under a completely separate process.

At its regular meeting tonight, the Bangor City Council will consider authorizing city officials to sign the consent decree.

The city’s share of the cleanup costs is $40,039. Bangor International Airport is asked to pay $36,518.

“At the time, we thought it was an appropriate way to dispose of waste oil,” said City Manager Ed Barrett. “It’s a step up from spreading it on the roads.

“But we recognize that there’s a problem out there,” he said of the city’s willingness to settle the matter.