Every year the Maine Department of Environmental Protection allows more than 1,000 tons of particulate matter and harmful gases to fly out of a 225-foot high stack in Orrington. This smoke comes from one of the largest garbage incinerators in the Northeast. It is operated by the Penobscot Energy Recovery Co. Our air is slowly becoming more dense and dangerous with chemical gases released from the PERC stack. Settling into nearby towns’ earth and beyond is hydrochloric acid, lead, mercury, arsenic, chromium and dioxins. All of these are toxic. PERC may be meeting the state DEP emission standards, but the standards are questionable.

The garbage comes from 163 towns, which is the waste of about 400,000 of central and northern Maine’s citizens and businesses. The waste burning gives PERC a $15 million income generating electricity for Bangor Hydro. Payment by towns for more than 200,000 tons of waste delivered each year brings in an additional $10 million or so. It must be a good business. Recently the Bangor Daily News article, “Group buys more of PERC/Minneapolis partners now own 70 percent of energy facility” (BDN, April 23), reported two men from Minnesota paid more than $20 million for part of PERC’s stock.

In 2002, PERC was fined $57,000 by the DEP for numerous air emissions violations over a period of six years. The stack emitted excess carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide on more than 300 occasions. In a January 2002 BDN article, Kurt Tidd of the DEP said the 300 violations were not significant because some of them lasted only a minute. According to a DEP official I spoke with recently, PERC’s emissions generally meet the state air quality standards.

The chemicals emitted by the stack do not leave our atmosphere, though they may change form – sulfur dioxide changes into sulfuric acid, and nitrogen oxide turns into nitric acid. According to Maine’s former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell, in his book “World on Fire – Saving an Endangered Earth,” “These acids slowly drift away, hugging the lower lining of the atmosphere, riding the wind currents … they return to Earth pouring down in the rain, sleet, hail and snow, setting in with the fog and the mist … they have become a silent, unseen, killing precipitation …

Mitchell is right. Air polluters – probably most from out of state but including incinerators like PERC – are contributing to the destruction of natural life.

Misty Edgecomb of the BDN wrote in March, “Thousands of pounds of mercury and lead sneak into dumps and incinerators in batteries, thermometers, fluorescent bulbs and household electronics … When these materials are burned, chemicals – many of them believed to be harmful – can escape into the atmosphere.” Edgecomb reported in the article, “Maine smog levels too high” (BDN, April 16), about Maine’s dangerous ozone levels and smog and how 108 Maine towns failed to meet federal air quality standards for ozone.

The public doesn’t know the build up of the emissions that are blown out of the PERC stack and the other three incinerators in the state. The public doesn’t know the build up of emissions from automobiles and trucks, from planes, from industrial discharges and from all other sources in Maine and from other states. The DEP and the U.S. government’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) need to find out.

The DEP may say PERC’s emissions are safe, but for whom are they safe? They may be safe for the standards, but not tough enough to keep our health on track.

Of every 100 tons burned at PERC, about 80 tons are released in the smoke and 20 tons remain as ash, a concentrated hazard. The DEP license allows PERC to emit 105 tons of sulfur dioxide, 599 tons of nitrogen oxide, 315 tons of carbon monoxide and 63 tons of volatile organic compounds each year. Over time, these and other substances coming out of the PERC stack accumulate. Does the state’s DEP know what that accumulated build up has been in the air, on the land and in our water since PERC began operating in 1988? It does not.

It has been 10 years since the last ambient air tests outside PERC were taken at schools in Hampden and Orrington. I learned in an interview with DEP Environmental Engineer Mark Roberts and according to DEP Representative Cyndi Darling there has been no testing of the soil or water outside of the PERC site to determine what the build up of toxic wastes might be.

A large problem with incineration is that it looks clean and it looks easy. For most people, it is out of sight, out of mind, but in the body and in the environment.

With technology and many scientific advances that take place today, it is not understandable why the government does not require improved garbage processing and cleaner waste incineration. At PERC, Plant Manager Peter Prata described to me how spray absorption with lime reduces stack flue gases and a “bag house” reduces particulate matter emissions. Prata believes incineration is a good answer to waste management, far better than landfill disposal. There is a risk in everything, he said.

Prata said the state has done modeling tests to measure gases. So, it is not understandable why the state has not done model tests to determine safe standards for emitted amounts and effects of hexavalent chromium, cadmium and mercury. Why don’t our state and federal laws or the DEP or EPA require a more effective scrubbing technology to significantly reduce gas and particulate emissions? The state should consider requiring catalytic converters in the incinerator stack to deal with carbon monoxide, as we do with cars.

Why are there no ambient air-quality tests or soil and water tests taken down wind or outside the PERC site every year?

We hear a lot of talk about diet and nutrition when it comes to health, but chemical intake into our bodies from breathing is just as important for humans to be healthy. It is a different aspect, but equally important.

Our quality of life is greatly dependent on the environment we live in. The public needs to help the situation, too. There are things we can do. Recycling can greatly reduce waste that is burned. Maine’s leaders need to look carefully at the hazards to our health and environment from garbage incineration, not just the economic benefits. They should approach this by bringing in scientific technology, doing necessary tests and involving public citizens.

Jenna K. Shue is a 10th- grade student at Hampden Academy.