State fines Canada power company $283,000

AUGUSTA – The power plant company Boralex Inc. has agreed to pay a $283,000 fine to the state to settle environmental violations at its Athens and Fort Fairfield biomass power plants.

The fine includes damage from a month-long fuel pile fire in Athens last year from which nearby residents claim they suffered headaches, eye irritation and difficulty breathing. Some moved away temporarily to escape.

In Fort Fairfield, the violations included several incidents of air pollution in excess of state permits.

The consent agreement with Boralex was among several approved by the Maine Board of Environmental Protection on Thursday.

Boralex will pay $64,000 to the state’s general fund under terms of the agreement. The remaining $219,000 will pay for a study on alternative uses of solid waste and arsenic and dioxin in demolition debris.

“It was something we worked very hard on,” Department of Environmental Protection Enforcement Director Jim Dusch told The Associated Press this week. “I think it was a good agreement.”

Boralex is a Montreal-based energy company that owns several biomass power plants in Maine, including those in Fort Fairfield, Athens, Livermore Falls and Stratton. The Athens plant closed in 2002 and has not reopened.

Earlier that year a fire in the plant’s fuel-wood pile produced clouds of noxious smoke, sparking the ire of area residents. Most of the settlement is designed to resolve violations at the Athens plant, Dusch said.

The DEP cited the plant for a number of violations in its report, including poorly managing its fuel piles, keeping too much material on hand and continuing to accept new shipments even after state inspectors told it to reduce the amount of chipped fuel at the site.

The Athens plant’s fuel piles caught fire around Jan. 7, 2002, and continued to burn through Feb. 6. The plant failed to report the fire to the DEP until Jan. 21, 2002, the agreement noted.

The following consent agreements also were approved by the BEP at Thursday’s regular meeting:

. White Construction Co., Inc. of Rockland will pay a $3,000 fine for improper removal of asbestos-containing insulation. The company was not certified to handle asbestos-containing materials that workers encountered during a February 2003 job in Rockland and did not use engineering controls to prevent the release of asbestos fibers.

. Statewide Asbestos Removal of Bangor will pay a $750 fine for not taking precautions required by law while removing asbestos-containing insulation from a Bangor home in May 2003.

. D.L. Overlock Excavation will pay a $2,400 fine, as well as complete an environmental remediation for illegal timber harvesting near a stream and illegal sand excavation below the water table in April 2003. The company must reestablish a 75-foot buffer strip between a gravel pit and the stream, planting groundcover and trees. The company also is required to fill the illegally excavated area so that 5 vertical feet of buffer exist between the gravel pit and the water table. If the remediation is not conducted to the BEP’s satisfaction by deadlines cited in the consent agreement, the company will be fined an additional $100 per violation, per day.

. Dale Henderson Logging, Inc. of Steuben will pay a $2,200 fine for driving a skidder across a stream in July 2002. The skidder destroyed about 40 feet of stream bank and dislodged sediment into the small stream, which is a tributary of a stream considered a habitat for Atlantic salmon.