A new way to clean up and old mess

More than a half century ago, in 1953, a young man from Ogunquit and his out-of-state partners launched a business charging 2 cents a gallon for the collection and disposal of used oil, sludge and solvents. A remote six-acre gravel pit near the Maine Turnpike in Wells was the first of five disposal sites eventually put into operation, including Casco, Wells, Ellsworth, Plymouth and Presque Isle.

More than 3,000 customers, from small town filling stations to Brunswick Naval Air Station to several Maine school districts, automobile dealerships and the Maine State Police, relied on Portland-Bangor Waste Oil Service Co. to handle their waste oil for three decades before there were any laws regulating the handling and disposal of waste oil and solvents.

In its early days, the company hauled oil sludge and solvents in 2,900- and 3,500-gallon truckloads. The manager claimed, “we probably put a million gallons” in the Wells site. At some point, when the area of the gravel pit became saturated with waste oil, a state patrolman spotted oil inching its way toward the turnpike. Consequently the Maine Water Improvement Commission visited the site and advised the company to build earthen dikes to contain the oil. Later, aboveground tanks were installed to store the waste oil and solvents. Some oil was sold to towns to spread over dusty camp roads or as a fuel for industrial boilers.

Portland-Bangor Waste Oil Service Co. went into business long before Congress and the states had responded to a mounting national crisis of environmental degradation caused by haphazard disposal of a wide variety of industrial pollutants. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Maine Department of Environmental Protection had yet to set environmental standards, issue permits protective of public health or monitor industrial compliance with the new laws. With the publication of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” in 1962, the public was just becoming aware of the threat posed to air and water by toxic pollution caused by chemical compounds invented and introduced since World War II. Portland-Bangor Waste Oil Service Co. shut down its business when hazardous waste management laws went into effect in 1981.

But the company left a legacy of badly contaminated land and groundwater in its five disposal sites. Unlike spilled oil, solvents travel readily in groundwater through bedrock fractures, making the cleanup especially difficult and costly. These costs include replacing drinking water supplies to a number of residents and the removal and disposal of contaminated soil. Cleanup of the site in Wells is completed while others are under way or in the assessment and planning stages.

The Plymouth site, the most expensive of the five to clean up, will require the installation of an $11 million pumping system that will cost $200,000 per year to operate for the next 30 years. The Department of Environmental Protection has indicated that this site remediation could require 80 years to complete.

Thus far, the costs of these cleanups have been born by former customers of Portland-Bangor Waste Oil Service. Several years ago, the Legislature established a loan fund to assist some overburdened businesses with these unexpected liabilities. Many of these customers have subsequently sold their businesses, leaving the liability on new owners. Other customers have died and some are no longer in business. Many former customers represent small businesses that have no choice but to defer investments in the business in order to meet a long-term obligation for oil spills in which the current owner had no involvement.

While this predicament also has been faced by other businesses responsible for other costly hazardous waste site cleanup projects in Maine, the Legislature this year determined that a more certain approach to completing the remediation of the Portland-Bangor Waste Oil sites is to establish a waste oil revenue fund bond supported by a $1 premium on oil changes on most cars and trucks. Owners of larger vehicles such as large trucks will pay a premium based on vehicle weight, up to $3 for a vehicle with a gross weight of over 26,000 pounds. This fee will be paid for by the business performing the oil change or by the owner of a fleet of vehicles who performs their own oil changes.

Premiums will cease being generated by as early as June 2018 and no later than December 2028 and will eventually supply $35 million needed to complete the cleanup. While the former customers will continue to be legally liable for this cleanup, today’s oil users, you and me, will provide much needed relief to these small Maine businesses.

By asking all vehicle owners to share the financial burden, we’ll all be paying a little each year to resolve a very big environmental problem caused a half century ago. And we’ll be helping hundreds of Maine businesses and employers across the state and, perhaps, in your own community.

Ted Koffman of Bar Harbor is a representative in the Maine Legislature and serves as House chair of the Natural Resources Committee.