Old Town copes with landfill stench Fumes not dangerous to breathe, say officials

OLD TOWN – A smell like rotten eggs and sewage has been plaguing residents near the West Old Town Landfill for about three weeks.

Although the stench dissipated Wednesday, it’s still a problem with which the landfill operator, the state Department of Environmental Protection and city officials are dealing.

“We knew that the landfill was smelling because people had called us and said that it smelled really bad,” City Manager Peggy Daigle said Wednesday.

While obnoxious, the fumes aren’t dangerous to breathe, according to city and landfill officials.

“[A landfill consultant] went out and tested it and said that the levels aren’t at a dangerous level,” Daigle said.

The three-way West Old Town Landfill deal among the state, Georgia-Pacific Corp. and Casella Waste Systems was designed to keep G-P’s Old Town paper mill open while addressing the state’s waste disposal problem.

The state bought the landfill site from G-P last year for $26 million and chose Casella, which runs the Pine Tree Landfill in Hampden, to operate it.

The Maine Department of Environmental Protection approved the project April 9, 2004. Attempts to appeal that decision have been unsuccessful, but continue.

Daigle and code enforcement officer Charles Heinonen have been keeping a complaint log since the end of last week. Complaints have come from residents on Route 43, the Old Stagecoach Road, the West Old Town Road, Route 16 and people driving on Interstate 95.

“I’ve received quite a number of complaints from 12 to 13 different people,” Heinonen said. Daigle added that she has received seven complaints since she began keeping a record, and DEP also has received calls.

“It smells like sulfury rotten egg stench mixed with septic sewage,” Debbie Gibbs of the Old Stagecoach Road said. Gibbs also is a member of We the People, a group that opposes the landfill deal. She noted that there was no odor Wednesday, but said that for the last three weeks it had been “really bad.”

“What’s going to happen this summer when all of our windows are open?” she said. “It’s a really wretched smell.”

Representatives from Casella, the city, DEP, and a Casella consultant from Connecticut who is an expert in odors met last Thursday to discuss the issue.

Since February, Casella officials have been operating test plots to see what ratio of mill sludge, ash and construction and demolition debris need to be mixed to create a stable landfill.

“We haven’t had hardly any complaints at all until about three weeks ago, and then all of a sudden the complaints started rolling in,” Heinonen said.

Casella officials are fairly certain that the smell is coming from a chemical reaction between the calcium chloride in sheet rock and the acidic mill sludge that is deposited at the site. Sheet rock is one of the items often placed in construction and demolition debris.

The recent large amounts of rain and cold temperatures have added to the problem.

“I think it’s pretty clear it’s coming from that test plot,” Heinonen said. “[But] until you really know what it is, you don’t know what the solutions are.”

Casella officials recently issued a letter to landfill neighbors responding to the odor complaints.

“We now feel that we have a better understanding of the cause of this problem and have initiated a number of abatement activities to combat the generation and migration of odor,” Casella Environmental Compliance Manager Tom Gilbert wrote. “Although some of these measures will not produce immediate results, we do expect to see a gradual improvement over time.”

City officials encourage people to continue to call if they have a complaint or notice a change.

“There’s not much we can do, but we’re making sure it gets passed on,” Daigle said. “When people call me, I let them vent and express their frustrations. I sympathize with them, I empathize with them. I feel sorry they are living with those conditions.”

Casella officials have apologized for the inconvenience to residents due to the odor and encourage people to call the 24-hour complaint hot line at 862-5427 if they have a problem.

“I understand people’s frustration,” Don Meagher, Casella’s manager of planning and development, said Wednesday. He noted that additional odor control improvements are planned for the future as the landfill operation gets up and running.

“I am absolutely positive that what we’re doing is going to improve things a lot,” Meagher said. “I’m hopeful that even now people have noticed some improvement.”