Town Will Apply for EPA Grant to Clean Up Brownfield at MDI YMCA
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by The Witham Family Hotels Charitable Fund.
BAR HARBOR—The Town Council held a public hearing on a grant application for an EPA cleanup at 21 Park Street, the town-owned property that houses the MDI YMCA.
Coal ash. Arsenic. Lead. Cancer-causing chemicals. It all lurks in the top three feet of soil at the MDI YMCA’s Park Street campus, a lot that’s owned by the Town of Bar Harbor.
The dangerous chemicals were verified in 2023 after 31 borings into the soil and around the YMCA’s foundation showed arsenic, lead, and other chemicals.
There were three options, according to Beacon Environmental geologist John Cressey: to do nothing, to have a complete soil removal, or a limited soil removal with off-site disposal and the installation of a marker layer.
“It’s our yard. It’s our play space,” MDI YMCA Executive Director Anne Tinnaken told the Council last year. The board and trustees are also looking at a scope of study around the entire perimeter of the YMCA building and she said it has had great momentum in what they want to do.
In 1998, before the Y was constructed, an investigation of footprint of the building found some unsuitable fill. In 2019 there was discussion about expanding the YMCA’s building to the east, which was related to an initial discussion for the Jackson Lab’s childcare being built there. When tested, they found not just unsuitable fill, but urban fill.
“We have a limited amount of space to operate and expand. Kids have been playing on that property forever,” said YMCA Board Treasurer Dean Read. “This was an Acadia National Park maintenance facility way back when. It’s been in the Y for 25 years or so. The town has varying needs that the YMCA tries to meet. We need that land to play on, which could be done with option 3, but we’ll never be able to have an expansion, which is option 2, which is a complete remediation.”
Coal ash and debris material either came from construction activities or the incomplete decomposition of materials on the site that was once owned by Acadia National Park and Versant Power. Whether or not Versant could also apply for clean-up funds was unsure. Town Manager James Smith said that he’d reach out to the company. Versant’s site contains a maker space and also stores the MDI/Bar Harbor Rotary Club’s equipment for the Fourth of July festivals. Smith is also investigating whether or not they can add additional nearby locations to the grant for testing.
According to Cressey, who did the “Phase II Environmental Site Assessment” report for his firm Beacon Environmental Consultants, LLC, some of those elements in the soil can be considered carcinogenic. Some is lead. Some is arsenic.
Initially, the town was going to apply for a grant that required a match component. That grant didn’t happen and now the match-component has been removed for grant applications.
Cressey is proposing that the town take out all the soil, which is expected to cost $510,000. That proposal is due on November 14, 2024. The award date would be May 2025.
That cleanup process would require a qualified environmental professional and it would be a part of the MEDEP voluntary response action program.
There are multiple DEP remediation sites in Bar Harbor and on Mount Desert Island.
According to the federal EPA there are likely more than 450,000 brownfields across the U.S.
CONTAMINANTS FOUND OVER GUIDELINES
During her tenure as the town’s sustainability coordinator, Laura Berry reached out to David Chapman of the Maine DEP to see if the town and the YMCA could take advantage of the Federal Environmental Protection Agency’s Brownfields Program to test the soil and determine the level of contamination.
According to Chapman, Maine receives roughly a million dollars a year from the federal government for brownfields’ testing. Chapman further explained that a brownfield is any piece of land where development has been hindered by a real presence or a perceived presence of contaminants.
Maine defines a brownfield as "real property, the expansion, redevelopment, or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant."
There were a total of eight contaminants that tested over the state’s RAG levels. They are listed below and they are each a link to the National Library of Medicine for that particular contaminant.
· Arsenic
· Lead
Disclosure: The author of the article is an immediate neighbor of the MDI YMCA.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
For a fuller list of site locations and contaminant levels, click here.
For more information on brownfield sites in Maine you can go to the State of Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection website.
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