Maine
Our View: Brunswick spill a ‘never again’ moment for Maine
Workers clean up a Chemical spill at Brunswick Executive Airport on August 19. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer
This editorial board published a preliminary response to the spill of toxic firefighting foam concentrate in Brunswick on Aug. 25 (“Our View: Response to Brunswick foam spill a multifaceted failure”). At that time, there were more questions than there were answers.
Even then, however, the scope and severity of the damage to our state was clear. This past week, some of our questions were answered. And those answers were very unsettling.
Staying on the story, the Press Herald’s Penelope Overton reported galling context Thursday. The fire suppression system in question at Brunswick Executive Airport was deemed “deficient” in the months before the leak.
Worse than that, the inspector’s report declared the potential for “accidental foam discharge” as – and this is a big word – “tremendous.”
Nothing was done to mitigate this formally established risk; no sprinkler repair person was called. Why? The airport’s owner, Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority, reportedly couldn’t find anybody to do it. The account given is extremely murky and maddening.
The executive director of the authority, Kristine Logan, put it this way. “We went back and forth with them until September,” Logan said of the company that conducted the inspection. “So then, when we couldn’t get them back in, we started calling around to other places to say ‘Hey, would you guys come out and do that?’ But nobody wants to do anything with PFAS anymore.”
Nobody wants to do anything with PFAS anymore.
Hey, guess what? PFAS – the toxic forever chemicals contained in some life-saving and some decidedly less life-saving products – are a hard, painful fact of life where we live. The damage wrought by sludge contamination has already ruined many lives and livelihoods in Maine. The efforts to contain and filter out these disease-causing chemicals are worthwhile, if very arduous and uncertain. They fall to the state, to our municipal bodies and to private business and individuals.
If it really was the case that there are no willing or able professionals on offer to the authority, some official intervention must be explored. Certainly, inspection and maintenance of this significance – with these harrowing downsides, where neglected or avoided – is not optional. It is not something that can fall foul of the whims of the market.
Now, the Brunswick story appears to be wending its way into an unseemly legal battle between the Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority and the business that conducted the inspection – the business that warned Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority that “next steps,” steps to mitigate the risk, would necessarily run to tens of thousands of dollars.
No kidding. That’s what dealing with these substances costs. As we wrote in this space back in June, we’ve got to wrap our heads around the rising costs of solving this problem – they are only going to rise.
Attention to the crisis of PFAS contamination at the state level has been well above average; Maine has invested more than $100 million in its response to PFAS in the past two years and spent about $15 million to help those materially affected. Even then, we are only getting started down this extremely long and difficult road.
Private enterprise is likely to pay as much attention to the crisis as laws, rules and effective enforcement commands it to. If the Brunswick fiasco is anything to go by, the attitude toward the responsible management of material that poses an inordinate threat to public health if irresponsibly managed is … lacking, if not cavalier. It is a sorry state of affairs when it takes a catastrophe like this one to sharpen the focus of our regulatory bodies and our codes. Our treasured local environment is not a testing ground. We know more than enough about what needs to be done and insisted on when it comes to curtailing toxic chemical contamination.
Knowing what we know, prevention is non-negotiable. Accountability and liability need to be crystal clear; the buck has to stop somewhere. And the consequences, where it doesn’t stop, need to be grave enough to be effective.
Many Maine municipalities will open cooling centers this week with the National Weather Service issuing a variety of heat advisories covering the next few days.
The Maine DEP also issued an air quality alert for Wednesday with ground-level ozone expected to reach levels that are unhealthy for sensitive groups.
All of York County, interior Cumberland and Androscoggin counties, and the southern half of Oxford County will fall under an extreme heat warning from 11 a.m. Wednesday to 8 p.m. Friday.
The warning calls for “dangerously hot conditions” that could feature heat index values of up to 110 degrees, with overnight lows only expected to fall into the 70s, according to the weather service’s office in Gray.
The rest of the state — save northern Aroostook, Piscataquis and Somerset counties — falls under a heat advisory from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Wednesday. However, the weather service has also placed much of the state under an extreme heat watch for Thursday.
Heat index values, which measure how hot it feels to the human body when relative humidity is combined with the air temperature, are expected to reach up to 104 degrees during the heat advisory period, the weather service warns. They could reach 110 degrees Thursday, when the extreme heat watch is in effect.
Northern Oxford and Franklin counties, and central Somerset County, can expect a heat index value of up to 99 degrees Wednesday, according to the weather service.
The weather service advises people to drink plenty of fluids, stay in air-conditioned rooms when possible, avoid extended periods in the sun and check up on relatives and neighbors. It also warns not to leave young children and pets in unattended vehicles, as “car interiors will reach lethal temperatures in a matter of minutes.”
Cooling Centers
The Maine Department of Environmental Protection has also issued an air quality alert from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Wednesday along the coast from Kittery to Acadia National Park. The agency warns that ground-level ozone concentrations are expected to reach levels that are unhealthy for sensitive groups.
Ozone levels may reach “moderate levels” further inland, according to the Maine DEP, including in all of Androscoggin and Kennebec counties, as well as parts of Cumberland, Knox, Lincoln, Penobscot, Sagadahoc, Waldo, Washington and York counties.
Elevated ozone levels can pose a risk to children, older adults and people suffering from respiratory or heart diseases, according to the Maine DEP. Anyone exerting themselves outdoors may also experience health effects, which could include coughing, shortness of breath, throat irritation and mild chest pain.
Ozone levels were already climbing in southern New England on Tuesday, according to the Maine DEP, and winds are expected to bring those conditions to Maine on Wednesday.
The Maine DEP recommends that vulnerable populations avoid strenuous outdoor activities, keep windows closed, and circulate indoor air with fans or air conditioners. Those with asthma are also advised to keep quick-relief medication handy.
Particle pollution levels are also expected to be moderate across the state on Wednesday due to wildfire smoke, the Maine DEP said in its announcement Tuesday. Wildfires in Colorado, which have claimed the lives of three firefighters, had burned nearly 90,000 acres as of Tuesday, according to the Denver Post.
Maine could face up to $50 million in penalties next year due to errors in its payments for federal food benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Newly released data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture find that Maine’s error rate last year was nearly 11%, the bulk of which were overpayments. That’s in line with the U.S. average. But starting in October of next year, states with error rates above 6% must cover a portion of the SNAP benefits.
Anna Korsen, executive director of Full Plates, Full Potential, said the overpayments aren’t fraud — they’re human error. She said this new cost-shifting policy enacted last year under the Trump administration further complicates the SNAP application process.
“Instead, we could make this program more accessible and more efficient,” Korsen said. “And that would reduce the number of errors and also ensure that Mainers who are eligible for SNAP have access to it.”
She’s urging Congress to delay or reverse the policy under the farm bill that’s currently under consideration.
Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services said it’s taking steps to reduce the error rate, including modernizing its systems and hiring an additional 40 eligibility specialists.
This story appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.
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