SOUTH PORTLAND—It’s one of Maine’s most desirable locations—home to a vibrant and diverse community, nearby beaches, and close proximity to Portland’s downtown. But for years, residents in South Portland have wondered: With 120 massive petroleum storage tanks dotting the shore and knitted into some neighborhoods here, is the air safe to breathe?

Now the first answers are in, thanks to a year of emissions monitoring along the fencelines of the city’s tank farms. At two of those locations, in particular, the results showed levels of benzene—a known carcinogen—well above the state’s limit.

“We’re about 300 feet from those tanks,” said Ted Reiner, whose home is surrounded by three of the city’s tank farms. It’s where he and his wife raised their two daughters, now 38 and 28. Around Christmas, Reiner had surgery for bladder cancer. Now he’s undergoing immunotherapy, and he can’t help but wonder whether his environment is contributing to his health woes.

“You just don’t know what the cumulative effect is,” he said. “I think about it a lot.”

Reiner lives closest to the Citgo South Portland Terminal, in a part of South Portland known as Turner Island. The tanks there primarily hold gasoline, while others in the city contain an array of petroleum products, including heating oil and asphalt. He and his family are among the more than 12,600 people who live within a mile of the tank farm, according to EPA data.

According to data collected by Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection, the CITGO terminal is one of two tank farms in the city where emissions exceed the state limit. Average benzene levels were measured at 2.18 micrograms per cubic meter, well above Maine’s allowed limit of 1.28 micrograms.

The highest levels in the city—3.05 micrograms—were measured at South Portland Terminal LLC owned by Buckeye Partners, which, unlike Citgo’s tanks, does not have people living nearby. A tank farm owned by Sunoco, meanwhile, had measurements just below the state guideline.

Long-term inhalation of benzene can damage bone marrow and blood-forming cells, suppress the immune system, and increase the risk of leukemia. According to the World Health Organization, there is “no safe level of exposure.”

Each reported number from the state is the average of a two-week continuous sample. Citgo’s final number for the year is the average of all those two-week samples. When examining a year’s worth of data, higher emissions levels get masked. But levels spike: For one two-week period in particular, the average benzene level recorded near the Citgo facility was 11.8 micrograms per cubic meter, nearly 10 times the state limit.

Those shorter-lived “burst emissions” can be dangerous in their own right.

One to 14 days of exposure to higher levels of benzene can cause headaches and breathing issues for sensitive individuals, such as children, older adults, or people with preexisting health conditions. The risk level for short-term exposure for benzene is 30 micrograms per cubic meter. What’s not clear in the state’s data is whether benzene levels get high enough to trigger those responses.

Rich Johnson, a spokesman for Citgo, said the company takes the concerns of South Portland residents seriously and is continuing to work with state regulators. “We believe it is important that any study of air monitoring results support accurate, representative conclusions about community-level air quality,” Johnson said.

Buckeye Partners did not respond to multiple emails requesting comment.

Petroleum companies and oil terminal owners use various technologies to eliminate emissions, but they still happen. Most often, chemicals escape from tank vents, equipment leaks and loading rack operations.

Anna O’Sullivan, a 42-year-old artist and therapist, thinks about all of this. She worries when her 7-year-old son, Henry, plays in the yard. “Is he just, like, absorbing what’s in the air?” she wonders.

She’s hesitant to eat anything grown in the soil there. She’s concerned that staying put means poisoning them both.

But she’s also stuck. O’Sullivan bought her three-bedroom cape, built in 1904, with a big backyard for $190,000 in 2017—a charming and impossible find in the market today.

“I can see the tanks from my house,” she said. The feeling is: “I need to move. I can’t raise my kids in an area where it’s just, like, poisonous air.”

But also: “I like my house. … It’s hard to move, it’s hard to buy a house.”

The science supports these emotions.

The readings are high enough “to merit serious attention,” said Drew Michanowicz, a senior scientist at Physicians, Scientists, and Engineers for Healthy Energy, an independent scientific research institute that brings science to energy policy.

Across South Portland, most people don’t live immediately next to the tanks, which lessens their exposure because emissions are quickly dispersed. But especially around the Citgo facility, some live quite close.

Until last fall, when she had to move following a house fire, Jacky Gerry was living near the Citgo tanks. “Did I ever think we were safe? Probably not,” she said. “But did a lot of people have a choice as to where you live? No.”

People in South Portland first became concerned about the tanks in 2019, after the EPA announced consent decrees, a resolution of a dispute without an admission of guilt, with two companies with tanks here—Global Partners LLC and Sprague Energy. In both cases, heated petroleum storage tanks containing asphalt and a thick fuel oil were emitting what are known as volatile organic compounds—chemicals that include benzene—in violation of their state permits. That issue was specific to tanks containing asphalt and number 6 fuel oil, which were previously thought to have no emissions, and is not the situation with the Citgo tanks.

As a result of the consent decrees, the operators installed systems to capture emissions that appear to have worked. In the most recent testing, emissions levels around both tank farms were below Maine’s threshold.

The consent decrees also helped put the tanks on the radar of lawmakers. In 2021, a newly passed law mandated that all petroleum tank farms in the state begin fenceline monitoring for chemicals including benzene. That monitoring began in August 2024, and the first results were released late last year.

Residents here have long taken the fight against industrial emissions into their own hands, including in a high-profile—and successful—fight to keep oil from Canadian tar sands from being piped into the city in 2018.

It was in that spirit that South Portland resident Tom Mikulka, a retired chemist with a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Cornell, opted to analyze the state results so residents would be able to start understanding the implications.

“I wouldn’t want to go to sleep knowing there’s high benzene levels that close to my home,” said Mikulka, referring to the houses that stand just feet from a fenceline monitor mounted along the Citgo property. “While there is diffusion, I can’t imagine the data is much different just a few feet away.”

The state findings validate the concerns he’s had all along. Mikulka first began testing emissions in the neighborhood back in 2020, when he used COVID relief checks to purchase air monitoring equipment. He hung one of the monitors on Reiner’s property, near the swing his grandkids like to play on.

Now, six years later, with official data in hand, Mikulka hopes the findings will be harder for regulators to dismiss.

That’s Jacky Gerry’s hope, too.

“Now that we have these answers, who’s stepping up to the plate to say, ‘Let’s try to fix that?’” she said. “Is it a city problem? An oil company problem? Where does it fall?”

A court hearing for Cher’s son Wednesday over allegations he broke into a New Hampshire home this month has been canceled.

Elijah Allman’s arrest on March 1 was his second in New Hampshire in a matter of days. Allman, the 49-year-old son of the iconic singer and actress, was also detained Feb. 27, accused of acting belligerently at a prestigious prep school in Concord.

It is unclear if Allman, of Malibu, California, has any connection to the home in Windham, New Hampshire. He is being held in the Rockingham County Department of Corrections, Superintendent Jonathan Banville said.

The hearing Wednesday was continued until an undetermined date after Allman got an attorney Wednesday morning. The attorney, Sarah Landres, did not respond to a request for comment.

Allman, whose father was the late singer Gregg Allman, is charged with two counts of criminal mischief, one count of burglary and a count of breach of bail for breaking into the home on March 1. Police said in a report that Allman did not have permission to be at the home and forcibly entered it.

Officials at St. Paul’s School said Allman last month identified himself as the parent of a prospective student and slipped into the dining hall as some students were leaving the building. Police responded to reports that he was disturbing people in the building.

He was charged with four misdemeanors in the school incident: two counts of simple assault, criminal trespass and criminal threatening. Allman was also charged with a violation of disorderly conduct, which is illegal in the state but not considered a crime. He was released on bail.

Allman did not respond to an email requesting comment, and a phone number for him was not working.

In December 2023, Cher filed a petition to become a temporary conservator overseeing her son’s money, saying Allman’s struggles with his mental health and addiction have left him unable to manage his assets and potentially put his life in danger.

The petition says the superstar performer’s son is entitled to regular payments from a trust fund. But “given his ongoing mental health and substance abuse issues,” she is “concerned that any funds distributed to Elijah will be immediately spent on drugs, leaving Elijah with no assets to provide for himself and putting Elijah’s life at risk,” the petition says.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Jessica Uzcategui denied the request, saying she was not convinced that a conservatorship was urgently needed. Allman was in the courtroom with his attorneys, who acknowledged his previous struggles but argued that he was in a good place, was attending meetings, getting treatment and reconciling with his estranged wife.