ORRINGTON – The tons of mercury at the closed HoltraChem Manufacturing Co. should not be shipped to India where the chemical will pollute the ground, water and air – which circles back around the globe to Maine, several dozen protesters said Saturday.

Instead, the vocal group said state politicians should do more to get the federal government to take the mercury and forever remove it from the marketplace.

The mercury, used to turn saltwater into chlorine and caustic soda, is already being exported from the plant, which stopped manufacturing in September.

While officials said the plant was up for sale, HoltraChem is filing an application with the state Department of Environmental Protection today to officially close the facility. Such activity would include dismantling the buildings and cleaning up the riverside site.

Officials at the plant, which for 30 years made the chemicals mostly for paper companies, have said that the 130 tons of mercury used in that process is headed for a similar facility in India.

As soon as state environmentalists heard the plant was shutting down they began talking with the governor and members of Congress about adding the mercury to a Department of Defense stockpile to permanently remove it from circulation.

Gov. Angus King wrote to Defense Secretary William Cohen to ask that his department take the mercury. A deputy responded last month that that was not possible because the Department of Defense can only store mercury that it has generated, unless such action is “essential to protect the public from imminent danger.” This was not the case in this instance, wrote Undersecretary of Defense J.S. Gansler.

Mercury is a known toxin that causes neurological problems, especially in babies and children whose systems are still developing. People are routinely warned not to eat many species of freshwater fish in Maine because of the high levels of mercury they contain.

Such evidence should be ample proof that the HoltraChem mercury poses an imminent danger to the public health, said Nancy Galland, a Stockton Springs resident and member of the recently formed Penobscot Alliance for Mercury Elimination.

More than 70 members of the group and their friends gathered on Route 15 near the HoltraChem entrance on a frigid Saturday morning to vent their anger at the decision to let the mercury leave the facility on the banks of the Penobscot River. Many waved signs with slogans like “Stop the Circle of Poison” as passing motorists honked in support. After several speeches and songs, members of the group walked to the locked gate at the plant entrance. There they chatted with three HoltraChem employees on the other side of the chain-link fence. They parted to let an oil truck go into the plant.

Protesters blamed the United States for trying to export its environmental problems.

“If it’s not safe here in our yard, it shouldn’t go to anyone else,” said Greg Smith of Bass Harbor.

Michael Belliveau, the toxics project director for the Natural Resources Council of Maine, said his group had recently discovered that one of the world’s largest manufacturers of mercury-containing thermometers is in India. The plant produces about 35 percent of the 2 million thermometers imported into the United States annually.

This is at a time when cities and states have moved to ban mercury-containing thermometers because of the resulting environmental danger when they are disposed of.

The banning of mercury-containing thermometers in Boston and New Hampshire was announced earlier this month.

However, these efforts to keep a few grams of mercury out of the environment pale in comparison with the amount of mercury that HoltraChem is selling, which totals 118 million grams.

A chlor-alkali plant in Kentucky is also scheduled to shut down, Belliveau said, so now is the time for the government to act to take the vast amount of mercury at the two facilities out of circulation.

Protesters also blasted King and the state’s congressional delegation for not doing enough to stop the sale of HoltraChem’s mercury to an Asian country with lax environmental laws.

“What does Governor King need to do to get a backbone,” Galland asked the hyped-up crowd. “We won’t take no for an answer.”

John Dieffenbacher-Krall, executive director of the Maine People’s Alliance, gave King credit for writing to the Department of Defense, but said more political effort was needed.

“It’s time for our political leaders to rise to the occasion and to try harder,” he said.

Dieffenbacher-Krall suggested a meeting between the environmental groups, officials from HoltraChem; D.F. Goldsmith Chemical & Metal Corp., of Evanston, Ill., the chemical broker that is buying the mercury; and the Maine Department of Environmental Protection to see if other solutions could be found.

A spokesman for the governor said Sunday that King has talked with environmentalists and tried to keep them apprised. John Ripley said protesters should direct their energies to the federal government because it would take an act of Congress or a decision by the Clinton administration to change federal policy to allow the Department of Defense to accept the mercury.

“He doesn’t want this sent to India any more than they do,” Ripley said of King.

Actions to stop the shipment of mercury to India would have to come soon.

The manager of the HoltraChem plant, Dave Baillargeon, said Sunday that 40 tons of mercury had already been shipped to Albany, N.Y. He said another shipment would be made before the end of the year.

Today, the plant will file a “post closure” application with the state DEP, meaning the plant is officially closing and the facility will be dismantled and cleaned up.