MEDDYBEMPS – Hazardous materials specialists are looking under piles of debris and digging through abandoned trailers this week as they remove some 5,000 compressed-gas cylinders from a Route 191 junkyard that has been the focus of legal action for a decade.

The state Department of Environmental Protection expects to find more canisters at the site. “We have 5,000 now,” said Nicholas Hodgkins, DEP’s oil and hazardous materials specialist. “We will have a couple thousand more, at least.” The cylinders’ contents range from acetylene to oxygen to propane.

The junkyard belongs to Harry Smith Jr., who has cooperated in this latest cleanup after years of legal controversy. Hodgkins, along with his crew and hazardous specialists from Atlanta-based Integrated Environmental Services, were at the junkyard earlier this week, and they expect to be there for a while.

The containers “are spread here, under piles of junk, in trailers, different containers around the site,” Hodgkins said. “We are dealing with those, some of which are in bad shape, potentially dangerous.”

DEP staff was on site in early May, preparing for this latest removal action.

As of March, DEP had spent $3.6 million to clean up Smith’s junkyards, including the Eastern Surplus site in Meddybemps, which belonged to Smith’s father and was declared a federal Superfund site in the 1980s.

This most recent effort is one of many that DEP has made in Meddybemps over the past several years. Last year the state found 130 10-gallon drums of calcium carbide, which is a highly explosive material, at a Smith site. Calcium carbide, when mixed with water, produces acetylene gas, which is used in welding.

The drums were in a 45-foot trailer that had been buried in the sand at the junkyard.

Hodgkins also said DEP is investigating whether some of the thousands of cylinders were cut in late April or early May. “The cylinders were cut up. I don’t know if it was illegal. The actual cutting of them is dangerous,” Hodgkins said. “The thing that is not legal is some of these cylinders contain asbestos and they contain acid and those weren’t containerized when they were cut. They were allowed to discharge into the environment.”

Smith has had a host of legal problems related to his junkyard.

In February, a Washington County Superior Court jury found Smith guilty of illegal handling of hazardous waste, handling hazardous waste at a location that does not have a proper license, and establishing, constructing, altering or operating a waste facility without a proper license or permit.

That case stemmed from a DEP inspection of one of Smith’s three junkyards.

In March, he was sentenced to a year in prison and four years of probation for violating Maine’s hazardous waste laws. A Washington County Superior Court justice also ordered Smith to pay a fine and refrain from all use, possession or control of hazardous materials except under the supervision of a DEP representative.

He remains free on bail pending an appeal of the Feb. 12 conviction.

Smith once had more than 1 million used tires on his property. He was convicted in 1999 of violating a state order to stop accepting used tires. DEP staff members were looking for used tires when they noticed a pail marked “hazardous material.”

As they search, Hodgkins said they are removing everything considered to be hazardous. “If we find four 1-gallon pails with some hazardous substance, we are taking those out too,” he said. “We are finding a lot less of that, obviously. Our focus is to get the trailers cleaned out and go through the piles and make sure we’ve got everything.”