Amid criticism, DEP scuttles pacts with paper firms

PORTLAND – Complaints about lack of public oversight have prompted the state Department of Environmental Protection to scuttle agreements with two paper companies regarding the cleanup of the long-polluted Androscoggin River.

Commissioner Dawn Gallagher said criticism about the process prompted the decision to remove the agreements with International Paper Co. in Jay and Rumford Paper Co. from the agency’s 10-year plan to bring the Androscoggin up to federal clean water standards. Environmentalists complained that the DEP negotiated secret side pacts with the companies and then failed to allow anyone else to comment on them. The Attorney General’s Office also raised questions about oversight.

It’s understandable, Gallagher said, “that some people think that it should have been more public than it was.”

The DEP’s 10-year cleanup plan for a river once named one of the nation’s 10 most polluted has been challenged by environmentalists and residents who say the proposed cleanup would take twice as long as allowed by federal law. Criticism about the process used to reach the agreements surfaced when DEP officials were unable to produce records of the negotiations with the Rumford mill.