Waste offender nabbed in Bay State

AUGUSTA – A 65-year-old environmental criminal from Meddybemps who has been on Maine’s most wanted list was apprehended Thursday morning at a salvage business in Everett, Mass., Maine Attorney General Steven Rowe said Thursday.

Junkyard operator Harry Smith Jr. had been on the lam for nearly two years since the Maine Supreme Judicial Court rejected his appeal of convictions for hazardous waste crimes and he failed to show up to serve a one-year jail term. Smith also failed to serve a six-month sentence for violating probation.

In July 2003, the Superior Court in Washington County ordered Smith to serve six months in jail for violating probation linked to criminal convictions concerning tire stockpiles at his junkyards in Meddybemps.

At the time his probation was revoked, Smith was free on bail after his convictions in February 2003 for hazardous waste crimes committed at the same junkyards in Meddybemps. He was sentenced to one year on the hazardous waste crimes but appealed the convictions to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. The court denied his appeal on Dec. 2, 2003, and he was ordered to serve his one-year sentence.

To date, he has not served either the six-month sentence for the probation violation or the one-year sentence for the hazardous waste crimes.

Smith was in the custody of Massachusetts officials while awaiting arraignment in Chelsea District Court.

Rowe said he was arranging for Smith to be returned to Maine, where likely he will face additional charges linked to his failure to report to jail.

“Through some fabulous police work and a bit of good luck, Smith is finally behind bars where he belongs. Let all who might [flout] our environmental laws and ignore our court orders take note of what our system promises for you,” Rowe said in a statement announcing Smith’s capture.

Smith’s capture was spearheaded by Attorney General Detective Charles “Chick” Love with assistance from the Portland office of the U.S. Marshals Service.

Investigators tracked Smith to the salvage yard after receiving a tip that he was living and working in the Everett area, Assistant Attorney General Leanne Robbin said.

Smith, who followed his father into the hazardous waste business, was accused of disposing of hazardous wastes at three eastern Maine sites that required environmental cleanups over a period of two decades. Among the sites was a huge tire pile laced with railroad cars filled with pails and barrels of highly flammable materials.

One of the dumps was designated as a Superfund site in which the federal government spent millions of dollars to protect pristine waterways and habitat for endangered Atlantic salmon, Robbin said.

She suggested that friends in eastern Maine assisted Smith in eluding police.

“There were a number of local people in the Meddybemps area who saw him as a hero,” Robbin said. “It was Harry versus big, bad government that was trying to get him to clean up the hazardous waste that created the risk of burning down Meddybemps.”

Shortly after Smith went on the lam, local rumors had him living in Central America or fishing in Argentina.

Although Smith was missing, the Department of Environmental Protection remained interested in his junkyard activities. Last year, the DEP went back to Meddybemps, looking through trailers and digging through basements looking for more dangerous chemicals. Hazardous chemicals were found at Smith’s mother’s house on Route 191 in Meddybemps.

The cost of the cleanup at Smith’s junkyards included the Eastern Surplus site in Meddybemps, which belonged to Smith’s father and was declared a federal Superfund site in the 1980s. “We feel that Maine and federal taxpayers paid a lot of money to clean up Harry’s mess, and it’s time that he paid a price himself for having created three hazardous waste sites in Down East Maine,” Robbin said.