• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Maine Dept. Of Environmental Protection Admits 'Stupid Mistake'

Posted on: Tuesday, 22 November 2005, 21:00 CST

By John Richardson, Portland Press Herald, Maine

Nov. 23--Maine's Department of Environmental Protection was wrong to take part in private, undocumented talks with a Rumford paper mill as part of a plan to clean up the Androscoggin River, the agency's head said Tuesday.

"We were wrong. We shouldn't have done it that way," DEP Commissioner Dawn Gallagher said during an interview with a reporter and editorial writer from the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram.

Gallagher's admission came after two weeks of sustained criticism and amid an investigation by the Attorney General's Office into whether the negotiations, and the absence of public records, violated Maine's Freedom of Access Act.

In acknowledging the department's mistake, Gallagher and Andrew Fisk, director of the agency's Bureau of Land and Water and the official who negotiated with the Rumford mill, said they hope to put the controversy behind them. They said they want to focus on the effort to finally clean Gulf Island Pond, a chronically polluted portion of the river near Lewiston and Auburn.

Fisk said it was a "stupid mistake" to agree to the private talks at the company's request, but that the state wasn't trying to hide anything.

A critic of the process said Gallagher's statements don't restore much confidence in the agency. And neither the admission nor her decision earlier this month to drop the controversial agreements with two paper mills gets the DEP off the hook for failing to clean up the Androscoggin River once and for all, said Nick Bennett, staff scientist with the Natural Resources Council of Maine.

"(The controversy) is really just the tip of the iceberg," Bennett said.

"All of that would be unnecessary if the DEP would write permits that would bring the river into attainment with the same standards" met by virtually every other river in Maine.

In September, the DEP finalized numerous permits and agreements aimed at bringing the Androscoggin up to minimum water quality standards in 10 years.

The package included five-year discharge permits setting an interim clean-water standard for International Paper in Jay and Rumford Paper Co., and separate side agreements in which the two mills agreed to achieve a high standard in 10 years. While the formal permits went through a routine public process, the side agreements did not.

When asked for background documents on the agreement with Rumford Paper, the DEP replied that there were no public records of the talks because the mill retained all preliminary drafts and notes.

Gallagher responded to the initial criticism earlier this month by saying the agency viewed the talks and side agreements as voluntary and not necessarily subject to the same rules as formal permits. But she also said the criticism was understandable and that the agency would set aside water-pollution side agreements with both mills.

The rest of the cleanup plan will stand, though it faces more than 10 separate appeals and very likely will end up in court.

Gallagher asked to meet Tuesday with the reporter and editorial writer after criticism and news coverage continued to focus on the private negotiations and side agreements rather than the remaining clean-up effort.

She and Fisk described the still-valid parts of the plan as perhaps the final hope for cleaning up the Androscoggin after two decades of fits and starts.

The intense fighting over the river, they said, magnified the controversy over the private talks and could cripple clean up efforts again.

Bennett, on the other hand, said the existing cleanup plan is a failure.

The DEP's own expert report says the paper mills can reduce discharges and clean the river in five years if the state forces them to do it, he said.

The Attorney General's Office, meanwhile, is continuing to investigate the talks between DEP and Rumford Paper Co. "We're still working on it and we expect to have something to say within a couple of weeks," said spokesman Charles Dow.

-----

To see more of the Portland Press Herald, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.pressherald.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, Portland Press Herald, Maine

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

Source: Portland Press Herald

More News in this Category