DOWN TO EARTH...

McKin gone but not forgotten
A review at the toxic waste site is under way.
By JOHN RICHARDSON
Portland Press Herald

Terry Connelly remembers clipping out a 2002 newspaper headline declaring an end to the long-running saga of the McKin toxic waste site in Gray.

It was a satisfying, mission-accomplished moment for Connelly, who lives in Eliot and oversaw the site for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The sad stories of all the people affected by poisoned groundwater around the former dump are still with him.

But toxic waste sites have a way of hanging around and causing headaches, or worse, long after the cleanup crews pull out. "They don't seem to go away," Connelly said.

Connelly is part of an EPA team revisiting the McKin neighborhood this summer as part of a five-year review. He hopes to find that nature's self-cleaning cycle is making progress. But it's a forgone conclusion that the plume of toxic chemicals is still lingering deep in the sand, gravel and bedrock, moving very slowly into the Royal River.

And there is an emerging concern that the chemicals left behind could still pose a health threat in the form of vapors seeping up through the ground.

The McKin Co. began dumping oil sludge and industrial solvents into a former gravel pit off Mayall Road in the 1960s. The waste came from more than 400 businesses, school districts, municipalities and churches.

In 1975, two friends living near the site noticed stinky drinking water. After one had a miscarriage, they began hearing about a range of health problems in the neighborhood, including skin rashes.

Tests finally identified industrial contaminants in the water two years later, and the town shut down McKin and began extending public water to the owners of 50 contaminated wells.

McKin became the catalyst for a whole set of state laws regulating the hazardous waste sites that would follow. It emerged around the same time as other toxic sites around the country, including one in a New York neighborhood called Love Canal, and eventually became one of the first in Maine to be named a federal Superfund cleanup site.

The parties that sent waste to McKin spent more than $21 million on the cleanup, which included pumping and treating groundwater for several years. The active cleanup was declared complete in the late 1990s after experts decided the site would clean itself naturally within about 50 years, just as fast as the pump-and-treat effort.

The groups that had been financing the cleanup paid a $4.5 million settlement to landowners and other parties. And in 2002 the story was declared over.

Groundwater and the Royal River continued to be monitored, however, and will for decades more. The Royal River has been meeting water quality standards, even at the point where the groundwater plume discharges into it, Connelly said.

But the old dump site may still be capable of harming its neighbors.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=188162&ac=PHnws

Beavers living the good life on Peaks Island
By JOHN RICHARDSON
Portland Press Herald

It's not unusual for mainlanders to head over to Peaks Island or some other Casco Bay community in hopes of making a home or raising a family.

Some stay and some don't.

But it is unusual when the newcomers that decide to stay are beavers.

Peaks now seems to have two beaver families -- or perhaps one family with a guest lodge. The two well-built lodges have appeared near the southeast shore and Trout Pond.

Along with building their lodges using branches, saplings and some pilfered lumber, the beavers have been hard at work on multiple dams. They've raised the water in a stream more than a foot and may flood part of Battery Steele this summer, said Garry Fox, a biology teacher at Portland High School and a member of the Peaks Island Land Preserve.

Fox and other islanders have been watching the engineering project progress, knowing that destroying the dams wouldn't discourage the industrious rodents from simply rebuilding. "You can't beat them in that regard," he said.

The first of the beavers is believed to have arrived about five years ago. One islander thinks she saw that one, tired and wet, crawl out of Casco Bay onto the south shore near Cushing Island.

The beavers seem to like the privacy of island life and keep pretty much to themselves. "They operate, it seems like, at night," said Fox, who has yet to see his new neighbors in the fur.

The islands of Casco Bay are certainly no Galapagos, a cluster of islands off Ecuador so isolated they have their own varieties of bird and turtle species. But the nearly two miles of Atlantic Ocean that separate Peaks from the mainland is enough to give it a different mix of wildlife.

"We don't have squirrels. We don't have chipmunks," Fox said.

Those smaller mammals can reach islands using the life-raft strategy -- cling-and-drift -- but the odds aren't good. It's a much easier journey for larger swimmers, which include moose and deer, a species Peaks has plenty of.

Raccoons can swim, but their thick, absorbent coat would get too heavy for a Peaks crossing, said Philip Conkling, a naturalist and director of the Island Institute in Rockland. Raccoons do sometimes reach Maine islands involuntarily. "They have been brought out to islands to be hunted for recreation," Conkling said.

Someone on Peaks once introduced a raccoon, but it hasn't been seen for a while, Fox said. Another islander once brought a skunk across, apparently to get the upper hand in some island feud. It was trapped and shipped back to the mainland, he said.

Coyotes have started swimming to some Maine islands, which worries those who raise herds of sheep offshore, Conkling said.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=189643&ac=PHnws

No refuge from wildlife underfunding
Staffing cuts endanger the last bastions for many plant and animal species.
By JOHN RICHARDSON
Portland Press Herald

Maine's national wildlife refuges have gotten used to a lack of money for biological studies, maintenance and other projects.

Now they're dealing with staffing cuts so deep that wildlife advocates warn that the refuges are in as much peril as some of the animal and plant species they're supposed to protect.

At the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge headquarters in Wells, for example, the staff has been reduced from eight people to five in the past year and a half. It's even more severe at Sunkhaze Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in Milford, where the sole remaining position -- manager -- was eliminated earlier this year.

The nation's 548 refuges, including 10 in Maine, are a last bastion for plant and animal species that are losing habitat to sprawl, pollution, invasive species or other forces. Refuges help sustain healthy wildlife populations and restore struggling ones.

Rachel Carson, for example, is a leader in efforts to save the piping plover and the least tern, two endangered shorebirds. The refuge also is helping restore the New England cottontail, an endangered rabbit species, said Ward Feurt, Rachel Carson's manager.

Refuges also provide opportunities for recreation and education. Nearly 400,000 people visit Maine refuges each year to hike, watch birds, photograph wildlife or study nature, according to the Cooperative Alliance for Refuge Enhancement, a national advocacy group.

The alliance released a report this month calling for a renewed commitment to the refuge system started by President Theodore Roosevelt 105 years ago.

"Refuges have been so woefully underfunded. What's happening in Maine is indicative of what's happening nationwide," said Desiree Sorenson-Groves, vice president of government affairs for the National Wildlife Refuge Association. A $3.5 billion maintenance backlog and an ongoing 20 percent workforce reduction are leaving wildlife refuges vulnerable and making them less visitor-friendly, she said.

Maine's refuges face a $25.9 million shortfall for conservation projects and deferred maintenance, according to the report.

The elimination of all employees at Sunkhaze Meadows, which had four staff positions five years ago, means that refuge will be managed from an office in Rockport, although it remains open to visitors.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=190986&ac=PHnws


Press Herald file photo

Coastal towns take issue with pesticides
By JOHN RICHARDSON
Portland Press Herald

A rebellion against lawn pesticides may be sprouting on the Maine coast.

Four coastal communities have adopted an ordinance or a policy to ban the spraying of pesticides on town-owned parks, playing fields and other public lands. First came Brunswick in 2006, then Castine last summer, followed by Camden in April and Rockport last month.

And, if folks like Patrisha McLean have their wish, it's just the beginning.

"Our goal is to join up all the coastal towns," said McLean, a leader of Citizens for a Green Camden. "I think there's an awareness (on the coast). We've already had calls from people in Lincolnville and Rockland."

The town bans effectively require their parks and recreation departments to go organic, usually with some exceptions, such as roadway medians or school properties.

The Camden policy, which was modeled after Castine's and copied by Rockport, says: "All pesticides are toxic to some degree and the widespread use of pesticides is both a major environmental problem and a public health issue. All citizens, particularly children, have a right to protection from exposure to hazardous chemicals and pesticides."

In Castine, the pesticide policy grew out of concerns about cancer rates in the small town. In Camden, it was a more general response.

"Some people in town got together who were concerned about all the little pesticide notification signs that pop up every spring," McLean said.

More than 20 Maine communities have some form of local pesticide-use ordinances, said Gary Fish, manager of pesticide programs for Maine Board of Pesticides Control. Most go back many years and are aimed at protecting certain aquifers or waterways.

The more recent trend of banning lawn pesticides from parks, playgrounds and other lands is much more widespread in Canada, and still hit or miss here, Fish said.

The Maine pesticides board adopted a rule in 2004 requiring Maine school districts to spray only as a last resort. Giving up pesticides cold turkey – especially when trying to maintain athletic fields – is not easy for towns and schools and can take re-education, according to Fish.

Some communities, such as Marblehead, Mass., have shown that it can be done, however, he said. And in Camden, the parks department is studying mechanical and organic methods for controlling weeds.

The backlash against pesticides on Maine's coast also is spreading beyond municipal and school properties.

Citizens for a Green Camden took their concerns to the town's innkeepers and hotel and bed and breakfast operators, and all of them have pledged to stop using pesticides on their green lawns and colorful gardens. Now the group is helping to spread the word about Maine's "safe-lawn lodging town" and its lush, organic gardens.

A sheet posted at Camden's town office quickly filled with the signatures of 50 residents and business owners who pledged not to use lawn pesticides, McLean said. And she and other leaders of the group continue to appeal directly to business owners, including commercial landlords.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=194025&ac=PHnws

Here in Maine, a biker's lot is not a happy one
By JOHN RICHARDSON
Portland Press Herald

So you're thinking about dusting off the old bike and pedaling to work.

There are a number of good reasons, including $4-per-gallon gasoline, global warming and those extra pounds you'd like to burn off.

Standing in the way, however, is an entire transportation culture that's built around cars and trucks and is openly hostile to anything that can't keep up.

Still, the number of people biking to work this summer is clearly way up, although no one knows by how much. And the trend, together with better safety laws, appears to be making the roads a little more welcoming, bikers say.

Volkhard Lindner of South Portland has been riding bikes to school and work for 40 years, first in Germany, where he grew up, and then in American cities from Seattle to Portland.

"Biking is a lot more part of the culture" in Europe, he said. "It's seen more as a means of transportation, where here it's seen more as a form of exercise."

Some American cities, such as Seattle and Portland, Ore., are known for their bike lanes, trails, parking facilities, safety laws and education programs, among other things.

Maine isn't a horrible place to ride, said Lindner, who bikes year round to his job as a medical researcher in Scarborough. He and others are quick to encourage more people to make the switch, as long as they know and follow the safety rules.

But Mainers have plenty of good excuses to stay in their cars and pickups.

Sprawl has put a lot of us out of comfortable pedaling range, for one thing. The average Maine commute is nine miles, although many of the people who can least afford gasoline live 20 miles or more from work.

Our roads are designed for Ford F-150s, not Treks. In cities such as Portland, there are notorious hazard zones for bikers -- try Congress Street through Stroudwater or Tukey's Bridge, to mention a couple.

Country roads tend to be narrow with no shoulders. And during pothole season, which peaks in April but never entirely ends, the edges of those roads can resemble mountain bike courses.

Even the traffic lights are against bikers. Motion sensors don't detect bicycles (or motorized scooters and motorcycles, for that matter), so law-abiding riders sometimes have to wait for a car to come along to trip the sensor and change the light.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=195187&ac=PHnws

Down to Earth: Forget mpg?
By John Richardson
Portland Press Herald Staff Reporter

Here's an interesting suggestion for saving gasoline, your bank account and the environment: Forget about how many miles per gallon your car gets.

A couple of professors at Duke University have been promoting the idea this month after determining that the math-challenged American public is fairly confused about fuel efficiency because of our fixation with mpg.

And it's not as crazy as it sounds.

Consider this example: Smith trades in a 10 mpg SUV for a slightly less inefficient 15 mpg SUV. Jones, meanwhile, almost triples his fuel efficiency by trading in a 20 mpg minivan for a 55 mpg hybrid.

Who is going to cut his gas usage more? Smith, the SUV driver.

In fact, assuming they both drive 15,000 miles a year, Smith will save $2,000 worth of gas and Jones will save $1,908. Now I, too, had understood there would be no math in this column. But times are pretty desperate with gas now rising toward $4.10 a gallon, and here is a case where a little math could change the way you look at the vehicles in your driveway and how you approach your next purchase.

The business professors at Duke started talking about fuel economy and mpg while carpooling to work in a hybrid. Then they asked college students trick questions like the one above, only not so obvious.

For example, which would save more gas: a) upgrading from 16 to 20 mpg, or b) upgrading from 34 to 50? The correct answer is a, although the college students tended to say b.

That led to an article in the journal Science, a call for a national math lesson and a lot of head scratching. "It's been nice to get the word out," said Jack Soll, one of the professors.

What's basically happening here, mathematically speaking, is a case of diminishing returns.

Even a small gain in mpg for a gas-guzzler can have a huge impact on fuel consumption simply because it's burning so much more to start with. Getting 5 mpg more out of a Ford F-150 could save $1,500 a year.

More fuel--efficient vehicles, on the other hand, are already using less, so cutting their consumption by the same percentage carries a much smaller savings. Getting 5 mpg more out of a Honda Civic could save $200 a year.

Of course, trading in the F-150 for the Civic is the best deal all around, excluding cargo space, of course. The professors took pains to say that improving fuel efficiency is a good thing no matter what you're driving.

But, if you're looking to compare fuel efficiencies and the cost of driving one car against another, they said, forget mpg. A much better way, they said, is to figure out "gpm" -- or how many gallons it takes to drive your car 10,000 miles. Using gpm, you see that improving from 10 to 15 mpg will save 333 gallons of gas every 10,000 miles, while going from 30 to 50 will save 133 gallons.

http://news.mainetoday.com/updates/029594.html

Beetle a threat to every ash tree in Maine
DOWN TO EARTH: Maine foresters on alert for dire threat: A beetle that could wipe out ash trees
By JOHN RICHARDSON
Staff Writer Portland Press Herald

The parade of campers and trailers rolling up the Maine Turnpike this weekend could be bringing more than the typical summer visitors.

Somewhere, perhaps in a bundle of campfire wood, could be lurking an environmental disaster for Maine’s forests.

The emerald ash borer – a half-inch-long, metallic-green beetle – doesn’t look like much of a threat. But its possible arrival this summer – if it isn’t already here – is so alarming to Maine forest and insect experts that officials are hanging strange purple traps in trees and staking out wasp nests to see if any of the beetles are showing up in the wasps’ diet.

“It’s very serious, and it’s a bit scary,” said David Struble, state entomologist for the Maine Forest Service.

The emerald ash borer is native to Asia and probably hitched a ride to the United States inside wood packing material. The insect feeds exclusively on ash trees, boring though the wood beneath the bark so that it’s hard to detect.

It was discovered in Michigan in 2002 and has since spread throughout the Midwest and Canada, killing more than 40 million ash trees – virtually all of them – in its path. There are no natural enemies or resistant trees in the U.S., and the only way to stop the insects from spreading is through quarantines of lumber and wood products.

Because ash can’t be commercially shipped out of afflicted areas, bring-your-own campfire wood poses the biggest threat to Maine’s ash trees. And the insect is now as close as western Pennsylvania and Toronto, well within range of a holiday weekend trip to a campground or family cabin in Vacationland.

The Maine Forest Service is placing traps at 12 coastal campgrounds from Kittery to Bar Harbor. The experts logically concluded that campers from the Midwest are the ones most likely to be headed to the coast to see the ocean.

The traps are baited with a pheromone and look like purple box kites. The green beetles seem to like the color purple.

State officials also are doing what they call biosurveillance. They watch ground wasp nests in certain areas because the wasps bring beetles back to their burrows to eat and are probably dining on emerald ash borers if there are any around.

“The wasps are much better at finding the beetles thanwe are,” Struble said.

Staking out wasp nests is labor intensive. But, Struble said, the potential cost is huge and “it’s the best test we have.”

Maine has millions of ash trees scattered throughout its commercial forests, or planted for shade in parks and along streets.

White ash is used to make products such as tool handles and canoe paddles. Black ash is prized by Maine’s American Indians as the traditional material for making baskets.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=197783&ac=PHnws

Green cemeteries take a final step back to nature
By JOHN RICHARDSON
Staff Writer Portland Press Herald

After a lifetime of recycling, composting, turning down the thermostat and trying to eat local organic food, some people might not want to leave their bodies to be filled with a chemical preservative and buried in steel and concrete, or even cremated in a gas-fired furnace.

Now they have a couple more options.

Maine's two green cemeteries -- natural burial grounds that don't allow embalming or steel caskets -- are open for business. And they're getting some.

"We have sold cemetery plots," said Peter McHugh, owner of Cedar Brook Burial Ground in Limington. "I'm in no rush to do burials."

McHugh has sold four plots since last fall, he said. The buyers, who probably are in no rush either, are from around southern and coastal Maine.

He also figures he's had 90 other inquiries from around the state and the Northeast. Although Maine has two active green cemeteries, there are only about 10 nationwide.

A standard plot at Cedar Brook costs $800, but there are generally few other costs to a green burial. Bodies are buried in wooden coffins, shrouds or even a favorite quilt. The discount factor -- a standard funeral can cost 10 times as much -- is one reason the idea has gotten so much interest and attention in recent months.

McHugh created Cedar Brook on about two acres of a 150-acre tree farm 20 miles west of Portland. He has put in a granite dust path, planted chestnut trees and done some thinning, but the area remains a natural woodlot where customers can be buried beneath trees when the time comes.

Maine's other green cemetery, Rainbow's End, is in Orrington, near Bangor. It covers nearly 15 acres of woodland and meadows next to the Penobscot River.

Rainbow's End had its first burial last December. A couple from Illinois buried their infant son in a plain wood coffin. They had been married in Maine and came back to give birth, but their son died before the delivery. Rainbow's End offered them a more natural and gentle way to let him go.

That couple, and those making future plans for green burials in Maine, are part of a generation of green-living Americans looking at death in a new way. Or, more precisely, an old way.

Embalming, formaldehyde and steel caskets are relatively new to the funeral process. All funerals were essentially green until 150 years ago.

Until recently, burial in a private family cemetery or cremation was the alternative. And those are still a preferred mode of departure for many who don't want a commercial burial, whether because of the cost or the environmental impacts.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=200306&ac=PHnws

Lobstermen: It's not easy being green
By JOHN RICHARDSON
Portland Press Herald

Maine lobstermen are quick to point out how careful they are to protect the state's signature sea creature.

And, while fishermen do sometimes exaggerate, they're not lying.

With the obvious exception of the lobsters that end up wearing rubber bands, the animals are treated pretty well.

Most trapped lobsters get dropped back into the ocean because they are too small, or too big, or are carrying eggs, or recently carried eggs.

Lobstermen know which ones recently carried eggs, by the way, because of the v-shaped notches that they clip out of the tails of breeding females.

You just can't do that with fish.

Now, however, the state's lobstermen are getting a chance to prove their conservation claims by having Maine lobster officially counted among the world's most eco-friendly seafoods.

With consumers around the world paying attention to the environmental impacts of every meal, industry leaders say they should do it quickly.

Representatives of the lobster industry and the Baldacci administration are hoping to win Marine Stewardship Council certification for the Maine lobster.

The distinction, a well-known seal of approval in the seafood business, would make the delicacy more appealing to the growing number of people who want to eat green, and we're not talking about tomalley.

It also would keep lobster on the shopping list of eco-conscious chefs and in the tanks of key retailers such as Wal-Mart, which has said it will soon carry only wild-caught seafood that's certified as sustainable.

A consultant's report submitted this week says Maine lobster could indeed qualify for the certification, as long as the fishery overcomes a few weaknesses.

Chief among the needed improvements are proving that the Maine industry is doing enough to protect whales from getting entangled in lobster gear, and spelling out what conservation steps would be taken if the lobster population declines.

The whale issue is a tricky one because Maine and its lobster industry are resisting a federal requirement that traps be connected by sinking ropes instead of ropes made to float above the sea floor.

Although floating rope is considered a risk to passing whales, many Maine lobstermen rely on floating rope to prevent snags on the state's rocky ocean floor.

The threat to whales is a primary reason Maine lobster is not classified as a "best choice" by Seafood Watch, a popular sustainable seafood list posted by the Monterey Bay Aquarium. (It is listed as a "good alternative," however.)

Massachusetts lobstermen have already gone along with the ban on floating rope and, in a marketing move aimed squarely at the Maine mystique, now use green "whale-safe" bands on the claws of their lobsters.

Maine's lobstermen, who also would have to accept more paperwork requirements, will have a chance to chime in on the certification plan in a series of three meetings along the Maine coast next month.

One-upping the guys in Massachusetts will be incentive enough for some.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=204931&ac=PHnws

Finding needles in a haystack? It's much easier at Back Cove
Hypodermic needles can be found easily along the beach, but their source is a mystery.
By JOHN RICHARDSON
Portland Press Herald

Back Cove is one of Portland's most popular public spaces. The 3.5-mile trail around it is ideal for a walk or a jog. And it's pretty.

Just don't look too closely.

Hypodermic needles, the kind used to inject insulin or vaccines, keep showing up around the edges of Back Cove. It's been a dirty little secret known only to the few brave souls who sift through the debris around the high-tide line in boots and gloves, trying in vain to keep up with the never-ending surge of trash that ends up here.

"I was mortified," said Sandra Wachholz, remembering when she first started finding the needles about four years ago.

Wachholz is a criminology professor at USM. But her hobby is picking up litter, which she does with the diligence of an archaeologist.

She regularly comes to Back Cove for about an hour, more than enough time to fill a trash bag with plastic wrappers, straws, tampon applicators and other cast-offs the rest of us would rather ignore. And she usually finds at least one or two hypodermic needles.

"My record is seven," she said.

At first, she guessed the needles were left by people using illegal drugs. But it was soon clear that this was something bigger. They show up all around the cove.

And there are a lot of them.

Although finding one is, literally, like pulling a needle out of a haystack, a volunteer clean-up crew collected 42 during one day in June.

The needles usually have plastic caps covering their points, but not always. Wachholz decided against leading student clean-ups here because she's worried about someone getting pricked by a dirty needle. And she worries about the risk of younger kids straying a few feet off the walking path to explore the water line.

"I would love to know where they are coming from because it's so disgusting to find them," she said.

The source, for now, is a mystery. The delivery mechanism, on the other hand, seems more obvious.

Back Cove sits at the discharge end of about a dozen sewer overflow pipes. During rainstorms, when storm drains fill and flood the city's sewers, the pipes discharge backed-up sewage and stormwater, along with whatever was flushed down toilets or washed into storm drains.

It can be a fairly disgusting body of water.

Portland is in the midst of a six-year, $61 million effort to reduce sewer overflows around the city, although it will need to spend even more to eliminate the problem entirely.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=209909&ac=PHnws


John Ewing/Staff Photographer