ND Paper Discharge August 2020
OLD TOWN - Each year over 200,000 tons of out-of-state waste is disposed of at Juniper Ridge Landfill, a publicly owned, privately run landfill in Maine. The waste used to construct it is toxic enough to have been banned from disposal in all 5 other Northeastern states. An annual average 10 million gallons of leachate from Juniper Ridge Landfill is received by the Nine Dragons Paper Old Town Mill facility, which holds the discharge permit that allows for the release of landfill leachate into the Penobscot River, the largest river system in the state of Maine.
Juniper Ridge Landfill leachate contains more than 100 different organic and inorganic toxic pollutants in the parts per million and parts per billion ranges, some long since banned from commercial use, and some near or above actionable concentrations for drinking water. These include metals such as Arsenic, Cadmium, Copper, and Lead; Pesticides, Herbicides, and PCB's such as Lindane, Dinoseb, Endrin, DDE and DDT; and other semi-volatile organics such as Dibenzofurans.
As of September 2020 the status of Nine Dragons Paper Old Town MIll is listed by the EPA as in "Significant Noncompliance" for "Failure to Report Discharge Monitoring Measurements," yet no formal or informal enforcement actions have been taken, at the state or federal level.
The Maine Legislature will soon hear a citizen driven bill that is An Act To Protect The Health And Welfare Of Maine Communities And Reduce Harmful Solid Waste.
It proposes to add a definition of Environmental Justice and Equal Protection to the public benefit determination standards.
It also proposes to close once and for all an industry driven loophole, which has for years allowed an interstate commercial waste operation to profit by laundering regional toxic waste material into a public landfill through rules that Maine's own Department of Environmental Protection has allowed.
Produced by Sunlight Media Collective