Orono to discuss Ayers Island cleanup

ORONO – A road map for the cleanup of contaminants on Ayers Island will be the topic of a public meeting Monday night.

Churchill Barton of Summit Environmental Consultants will present the company’s remediation plan and cost analysis from 7 to 9 p.m. in council chambers.

When the town took over the 62-acre island and the former Striar Textile Mill in 1999, decades of industrial use had formed deposits of coal ash, petroleum and PCBs around the island.

University of Maine professor George Markowsky purchased the island last month and is planning to build a research and development park there, but federal regulations require the contaminants be cleaned up first.

Monday’s presentation will focus on the island’s problem areas and discuss the different cleanup methods Markowsky could pursue, according to Acting Town Manager David Struck.

The island’s single largest source of contamination is 25,000 cubic yards of coal ash, Struck said. Associated cleanup costs are projected to reach $500,000 if the ash is covered where it rests, $1.4 million if it is moved to another part of the island and covered or $3.4 million if it is removed from the island altogether.

“There are choices within the levels of disposal,” Struck said.

Heavy metals located in the floor of the dye house, such as cadmium, mercury and arsenic, along with various oils that seeped into the floor in a blending room may pose a threat to the groundwater, he said. Physical removal will be the likely course of cleanup for those contaminants, he said. Asbestos and lead-based paint chips may be handled similarly.

“Basically what [the cleanup] would do is take hazardous material in an uncontrolled area to a place where there’s a proper containment,” Struck said.

In terms of funding, the remediation plan was a necessary step for Markowsky to access a $750,000 revolving loan fund given to the town in December 2001 by the Environmental Protection Agency for Brownfield cleanup, Struck said.

The intention was for the town to make loans to developers for the cleanup of the island in order to return it to suitable conditions for economic development.

With the size of the loan fund and the island’s anticipated cleanup cost ranging from $750,000 to more than $3 million, it is likely that the town would lend the money out again after it is repaid, Struck said.

“It’s not like the island has to be cleaned up all at once,” Struck said.

After Monday’s meeting, a hard copy of the remediation plan will be located in the town office, where the public is welcome to leave written comments to be incorporated into the plan’s final draft.