The U. S. Department of Defense has refused Gov. Angus King’s request that the agency add the mercury from the now-closed HoltraChem Manufacturing Co. facility to its stockpile, raising fears among the environmental community that the toxic metal will be sent overseas for use in India.

King had asked U. S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen to take the more than 260,000 pounds of mercury and add it to the 5 million pound stockpile that the Defense Logistics Agency maintains in several locations throughout the United States.

In a letter received by the governor’s office Thursday, Undersecretary of Defense J.S. Gansler said his agency could not take the mercury because federal law does not allow the department to store or dispose of toxic or hazardous materials that it does not own.

“Although the statute permits an exception when essential to protect the public from imminent danger, this situation does not appear to present such a circumstance,” Gansler wrote.

Members of the Penobscot Alliance for Mercury Elimination, a coalition of environmental groups, disagree with Gansler’s assessment of the potential danger.

“The rejection letter from the Defense Department is a toxic slap in the face to public health and Maine’s environment,” said Michael Belliveau, toxics project director for the Natural Resources Council of Maine.

Belliveau said he has heard from state and federal officials that HoltraChem intends to sell the mercury to a chemical broker that wants to ship it to India.

The Orrington plant’s manager, Dave Baillargeon, said Thursday he had also heard the mercury was headed for India.

News of the possible transfer of the chemical to India raises memories of the biggest chemical disaster in history, which occurred there in 1984. A leak of poisonous gas at a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal killed 2,500 people and injured more than 50,000 others, prompting many to question whether the U.S. company had taken advantage of lax safety regulations in the Asian country.

Plants in India continue to use mercury to make chlorine and caustic soda, which has been nearly eliminated from the process in the United States. Before it closed this fall, HoltraChem still used the chemical at its Orrington plant, but had been pressured by environmentalists to change to a newer, safer mercury-free process at its North Carolina plant.

“This would amount to nothing less than environmental racism if what Maine recognizes as a hazardous waste is dumped onto poorer countries with less regulatory infrastructure who use obsolete technology,” said Richard Stander of the Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine.

A spokesman for King, who is on a trade mission in Europe, said his office had just received the letter and that they were still weighing their options on how to respond.

Members of the Penobscot Alliance called upon King to convene an emergency meeting with them, HoltraChem and the chemical broker, D. F. Goldsmith of Evanston, Ill., to discuss alternatives to selling the mercury for use in India.

They also were still hopeful that members of Congress can be convinced to move forward with a national mercury retirement program, which would permanently take mercury out of circulation.

“The mercury hasn’t left yet. Not every option has been exhausted,” Belliveau said.

Baillargeon said chemicals are still being drained from the Orrington plant as part of the “stand down” process.

The plant stopped manufacturing chemicals in September, after 30 years in operation. At that time, company officials said a buyer for the plant was being sought. With no purchase in the offing, the company is now developing a closure plan that it is required to file with the state’s Department of Environmental Protection.

All the mercury has been removed from the HoltraChem buildings and is being stored on site before being shipped away. Baillargeon said the mercury is slated to leave the plant “in the very near future.”

“No mercury should move from the HoltraChem site until another solution is found to keep this poison out of the environment,” said Nancy Galland of the Native Forest Network, a national organization.

At a September meeting, all the commissioners of the departments of environmental protection in New England agreed to bid on the mercury – which has a value of about $100,000 – and to take it off the market. However, the regional director for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said this couldn’t happen because there was nowhere to store the mercury once it had been purchased given the Department of Defense’s refusal to take it.

“I think it a sad commentary that a federal administration that prides itself on [and even brags about] its environmental record cannot influence their own administrators to do the right thing, especially in a Department of Defense lead by a former United States senator from the state in which the problem is located,” Arthur Rocque, commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, said of the situation last week.