New home for mercury hard to find Activists object to ‘toxic trade’; metal in casks at HoltraChem

Eighty tons of mercury, still in storage at the shuttered HoltraChem Manufacturing Co. facility in Orrington, isn’t going anywhere soon. The Pennsylvania company that was slated to take the hazardous material has been scared off by environmentalists protesting what they call “toxic trade.”

Environmental activists in Maine have decried repeatedly – as recently as during a small demonstration last week – the potential resale of the mercury because they believe it should be removed from the marketplace permanently and stockpiled. Earlier this year, they succeeded in stopping a 20-ton shipment of HoltraChem mercury to India when that country’s government refused to accept it, accusing the U.S. government of sending its waste to poorer countries.

“As long as there is adverse publicity,” his company will not accept the mercury, said Bruce Lawrence, president of Bethlehem Apparatus Co. The Hellertown, Pa., company is the world’s largest mercury recycler and was slated to begin receiving shipments from HoltraChem this week.

“I don’t want to get involved,” Lawrence said. No groups in Pennsylvania have protested his taking the mercury, but, he said, he didn’t want to run the risk that his company might become the target of activists’ wrath.

Lawrence may be a bit gun-shy because Greenpeace recently reported that a protest by workers and local residents succeeded in suspending operations at a thermometer factory in southern India after two illegal mercury dumps were found near the plant. Small containers of mercury bearing Bethlehem Apparatus labels were found dumped behind the factory, according to pictures posted on the Greenpeace India Web site.

Activists, who have formed a coalition called the Penobscot Alliance for Mercury Elimination, or PAME, cheered the latest development because it gives them more time to work on developing a federal policy for mercury retirement.

“If this mercury is sold and divided into smaller and smaller pieces, it is harder for us to achieve our ultimate objective,” said John Dieffenbacher-Krall, executive director of the Maine People’s Alliance, a member of PAME.

He said Bethlehem Apparatus’ refusal to take the mercury was “great” because it gave PAME members more time to work with the governor and members of Congress to come up with ways to eliminate mercury trading.

U.S. Sen. Susan Collins has introduced legislation to set up a task force of federal agencies charged with seeking ways to take used mercury out of circulation permanently so it is not traded around the globe. If the bill is passed, the task force must report its finding to Congress within one year. The measure includes $500,000 for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to conduct a mercury retirement study.

Gov. Angus King last year asked the Department of Defense to add the HoltraChem mercury to a 4,000-ton stockpile it maintains, but that request was refused because the federal agency said it was prohibited from taking mercury it does not own.

In the meantime, the mercury, which was used in the process of converting salt water into chlorine, will sit in storage containers at HoltraChem. Fifty-one tons, in approved storage and shipping containers, rest on the concrete floor of the former cell room where the chemical reaction took place. The remaining mercury is in a long cylindrical container made by plant employees for temporary storage.

On a recent tour of the facility, officials from the EPA pointed out that the concrete floor was sloped downward and any mercury that spilled would safely flow into a drain where it could be vacuumed up.

The same officials expect HoltraChem to be defunct as a company by the end of this week, raising questions about who owns the mercury and who is responsible for its safe storage. While the company soon may cease to exist, there will be workers at the plant for years to come. A wastewater treatment system, which state regulators mandated be installed to remove mercury from groundwater at the facility, must remain in operation for the foreseeable future. It will take several people to keep that system running.

State and federal officials are negotiating with a past owner of the plant, Mallinckrodt Inc., to get it to pay for and undertake the cleanup of the site. Mallinckrodt, a St. Louis-based pharmaceutical and chemical company, has agreed to run the wastewater treatment plant for the immediate future, and one of its subsidiaries has been given the contract to dismantle the plant. That work can’t begin until state regulators approve a cleanup plan. A sketchy plan written by HoltraChem employees was rejected by the DEP because the plan lacked details on how the cleanup would take place and who would pay for it.

Having casks of mercury on site complicates cleanup because the two-story structure in which the casks now sit can’t be torn down while the containers are there.

“Where it’s at now is OK, but it can’t stay there, and that’s the problem,” said Mark Merchant, a spokesman for the EPA in Boston.

He said the current storage system is adequate but the mercury eventually needs to leave the plant. He said it was likely that Mallinckrodt would take possession of the mercury if HoltraChem ceases to exist as a corporate entity.

Options for getting rid of the mercury are dwindling for D.F. Goldsmith Chemical and Metal Co., the wholesaler that was set to take possession of the mercury when it left Orrington.

“There is such a stigma on this mercury that no one wants to handle it,” said company president Don Goldsmith.

He said there are probably a few other companies that could take the mercury, which is considered a hazardous waste and requires special handling, but he wonders if they too will be loath to become involved in what has become an international saga.

Goldsmith had asked the state Department of Environmental Protection to reclassify the mercury, which is more than 99 percent pure, from a hazardous waste to a commodity. Most states consider such used mercury a commodity. The DEP refused the request because the state classifies any chemical that is no longer used in the manufacturing process that it was purchased for to be a hazardous waste.

Goldsmith termed the environmentalists’ protests over the mercury “illogical” because if HoltraChem’s stock is not resold, companies seeking mercury will simply buy it elsewhere, which likely means more of the metal will have to be mined.

“The greatest illogic is the continued use of mercury when there are safe alternatives,” said Michael Belliveau, toxins project director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine.

He suggested that companies such as Bethlehem Apparatus and D.F. Goldsmith know how to store mercury safely so the federal government should consider buying it and having these companies store it until a longer-term solution can be found.