ORRINGTON – Tempers flared and emotions ran high Thursday night during an informational meeting about plans to clean up the closed HoltraChem Manufacturing Co. facility.

More than 200 people, about half of them residents of the town that has been home to the chemical plant for more than 30 years, attended the meeting in the Center Drive School cafeteria.

Representatives from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection and a Massachusetts-based environmental engineering firm brought charts, graphs, studies, photographs and handouts detailed the extent of mercury contamination at the site. Many in attendance expressed frustration with the agencies and left dissatisfied.

“We’ve been poisoned,” said Heather Leslie of Orrington, setting the tone for the rest of the meeting.

She angrily threw down a copy of a list of 22 items she claimed were affected by the contamination. Then she stormed from the cafeteria, past the Penobscot County sheriff’s deputy keeping watch over the gathering and out of the building.

Leslie’s 22 demands included federal funding for a variety of programs in Orrington, among them public health services, redevelopment of the North Orrington School, compensation for property damage, a sidewalk or bike path along Route 15, and funding for special education and music programs in schools.

“We’ve had 30 years of toxicity in this town, and you have not done your job,” she told the officials. “This is not enough.”

Representatives of regulatory agencies toured the aging plant last month and estimated the cost of cleanup to be at least $15 million.

The facility and a landfill full of mercury sludge are only yards from the Penobscot River. When it first began operations, the plant dumped mercury-laden water directly into the river.

Under the river lie tons of mercury, a toxic heavy metal known to impair neurological development in children. The plant made chemicals such as chlorine, mainly for paper companies. The ground where tanks and sheds now stand is contaminated with mercury and other chemicals.

Leslie and others at the meeting Thursday night asked pointed questions about the dangers of air emissions from the plant. None of the studies addressed air quality or emissions from the factory.

Jeff Emery of the DEP said air emissions from the HoltraChem plant were monitored for one year from sometime in 1999 into 2000. He said air-borne mercury levels were much lower than anticipated.

Several people expressed concern that Earth Tech, the contractor hired to begin contamination studies and preliminary cleanup work, is owned by Tyco International, the same firm that owns Mallinckrodt. Mallinckrodt owned the plant from 1967 to 1982.

Last week the state received a signed agreement of understanding from Mallinckrodt establishing a fund of about $487,000 to be used over the next two months to staff and maintain the site. Details of the cleanup and who will pay for it are still to be worked out.

“There’s been a lack of public trust in the process up to now,” said Richard Stander of Stockton Springs. “Earth Tech’s stated that its major concern is reducing the cost of the cleanup. There seems to be a collection of people [at Earth Tech] pulling the wool over the regulators’ eyes and ours.”

“We shouldn’t have to trust anyone else,” said Ernie Waterman, an EPA official based in Boston, in an effort to include the public in the decisions that must be made about the site’s future. “We should trust ourselves. We should gather as much information as we can and trust ourselves.”

Orrington officials are as concerned with taxes as they are with trust. The factory paid $228,000 in taxes each year, between 8 percent and 10 percent of the town’s tax base, according to Dick Harriman, tax assessor.

Harriman said he plans to sit down next week with HoltraChem officials to determine the valuation of the mothballed plant.

Last year, the facility was assessed at a little more than $15 million. The company recently declared it was worth only $2.5 million since the shutdown.

Linda Haagan, who owns Loon Hollow Cottages on Fields Pond, said when she told a potential summer renter from the Midwest the cottages were in Orrington, the caller recognized the town and referred to it as “a hotbed of mercury.”

“My worst fear is that we’re loaded with mercury,” said Haagan. “We’re eating, breathing and living it. I can’t control that right now and that makes me feel powerless. … I’m afraid that we’ll need an Erin Brockovich down the road because we’ll all be sick after officials telling us ‘It’s fine, it’s fine’ for so many years.”

Information outlined by the DEP, EPA and the engineering firm are available at the Orrington library.

A meeting that will outline more specific goals and strategies for site cleanup will be scheduled later this spring, according to EPA officials.