LIMESTONE, Maine — An Aroostook County tribe has found that industrial hemp plants will extract so-called forever chemicals from contaminated soil on land it owns at the former Loring Air Force Base.

There’s one problem: no one can figure out what to do with the hemp.

“There hasn’t been a way to get the PFAS out of the plants without it going back into the environment,” said Mi’kmaq Nation Vice Chief Richard Silliboy.

Finding a way to take per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS, out of contaminated hemp plants without unintentionally releasing them into the air is the next step in the tribe’s effort to remediate 650 acres of polluted land the U.S. government turned over to it 15 years ago.

Using hemp plants to suck up PFAS from the ground has been touted nationally as a potential fix for the widespread pollution. But the Maine tribe’s experience has revealed a significant obstacle to making it work. Testing will soon be underway to try to find a solution to the roadblock.

PFAS refers to a group of manufactured chemicals often found in household and personal care products that have polluted soil and water at former manufacturing sites. Known to break down slowly, the long-lasting “forever chemicals” have been linked to increased risk of some cancers, issues with hormonal and immune systems, developmental delays in children, and other health issues, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The land the federal government gave the Mi’kmaq Nation in 2009 was so contaminated it was designated a federal Superfund site. The Mi’kmaq property used to be a key training area for Loring firefighters, who used a PFAS-laden foam.

In 2019, Silliboy and Chelli Stanley co-founded Upland Grassroots, an organization dedicated to cleaning up the Mi’kmaq parcel. Stanley, who lives near Hallowell and has a background in community organizing, learned about hemp-based PFAS extraction and contacted Silliboy, who was immediately interested in its potential.

That year, Stanley, Silliboy and other tribal members planted and harvested several small plots of hemp plants on the Loring property. They sent the harvested hemp to the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, a state-run scientific research facility.

Initial data showed that the hemp plants were extracting various forms of PFAS, including perfluorooctanesulfonic acid, or PFOS. In summer 2022 the group planted five larger plots, with four hemp varieties grown in smaller subsections within each plot.

Of the 28 PFAS varieties identified in the soil, 10 were found in the harvested hemp plants, according to the group’s research published earlier this year.

Stanley and the Mi’kmaq Nation want to eventually expand the number and size of hemp plants to test for larger extractions of PFAS. But without a safe method to dispose of the PFAS-laden hemp, the group’s research can only happen on a smaller scale.

“We don’t want to put the hemp in a landfill and have it be somebody else’s problem,” Stanley said.

One of the group’s scientific partners, the University of Virginia, is currently developing and will soon be testing a method to take PFAS out of hemp plants, according to Bryan Berger, a chemical engineering professor.

Berger declined to reveal what method will be tested but said that if successful, he and colleagues could publish results in early 2025.

Hemp, like other plant species containing toxic contaminants, cannot simply be burned, Berger said.

“That ends up creating airborne forms [of PFAS] that can end up in the atmosphere,” Berger said.

Hemp-based research related to PFAS extraction has been limited, as industrial hemp was only approved for agricultural use in 2018, and funding for such studies remains limited. But Berger and tribal partners recently scored a major funding source to expand their efforts and work toward long-term solutions.

Starting in 2025, the Mi’kmaq Nation, Stanley, Berger, the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station and Central Aroostook Soil and Water Conservation District will use a four-year, $1.6 million EPA grant to continue hemp planting at Loring and testing potential ways to extract PFAS from harvested hemp.

As part of the grant, the group will also test areas of the Aroostook River, a waterway that the Central Aroostook Soil & Water Conservation District has found to contain PFAS due to irrigation runoff from nearby crop fields. They will study hemp as a potential rotation crop for keeping PFAS from seeping into potatoes and other produce.

The agricultural studies will be a continuation of work that the conservation district has already begun, Berger said. His lab will test approximately 300 to 400 samples of water from the Aroostook River as well as potatoes and other crops to know the extent of PFAS contamination.

With colleagues from the Connecticut station, the group will study how PFAS moves through insect food chains using sample insects from Aroostook.

Berger credited the Mi’kmaq Nation and Stanley’s initial collaboration for being one of the first groups to study PFAS and hemp at the community level and bring attention to its potential.

“As a researcher, I have not seen a lot of people work on this until recently, so they’re way ahead of everybody else,” Berger said. “Our goal really is to help other tribes, farmers and rural communities who have been impacted [by PFAS].”

The Maine Warden Service is offering a $2,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of a man who shot a domestic dog on a hiking trail in North Yarmouth on Friday.

The incident happened at about 11 a.m. as three people were walking their dogs on a marked trail in the Knights Pond Preserve, according to the Warden Service.

One of their dogs was shot about 20 feet ahead of them.

According to the Warden Service, the shooter was described as a man in his 30s, with dark hair and scruffy facial hair. He was wearing a blaze orange vest, a blaze orange hat and camouflage pants. The owners of the dog had a brief encounter with the shooter, but he quickly fled the scene.

A man matching this description was seen leaving the area in a dark-colored, full-size pickup truck, according to the Warden Service.

“This atrocious, negligent shooting is both heinous and inexcusable, and is aggravated by the cowardly act of the shooter fleeing the scene,” Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Commissioner Judy Camuso said in a statement. “The incomprehensible and appalling act of one individual tarnishes the reputation of all of Maine’s 230,000 hunters.”

Anyone with information is encouraged to call the Maine Warden Service at 207-624-7076, or contact Operation Game Thief at 1-800-ALERT-US.

The Warden Service is also urging the shooter to call 207-624-7076 and turn himself in.

This story first appeared in the Midcoast Update, a newsletter published every Tuesday and Friday morning. Sign up here to receive stories about the midcoast delivered to your inbox each week, along with our other newsletters.

It’s never been simple to get repairs and expansions done on Maine’s coastal properties. Owners must work with a handful of firms that specialize in marine construction to get their projects designed, permitted and built.

But those projects got even harder this year, after a handful of storms last winter did widespread damage across the state. Some of the heaviest destruction was along the coast, where two storms in January tore out many docks and wharves while severely eroding parts of the shoreline.

That created a big backlog for companies like Prock Marine of Rockland. While it previously took the firm 10 to 14 months to complete projects such as dock rebuilds and shoreline stabilization, the timeline roughly doubled — to between 18 months and two years — as repairs from last winter’s storms came in, according to project manager Sean Kelly.

The company could eventually shorten that timeline by expanding its staff of 35 to 40 people. But construction firms such as Prock have had a hard time filling positions even as its more experienced staff approach retirement.

“We’d love to put together another crew, another barge crew, but it’s hard to maintain what we’ve got,” Kelly said.

By now, it’s well understood that Maine needs more workers to replace those who are aging out of vital industries such as construction and other trades. But state officials recently singled out marine construction as one that’s most in need of new workers if Maine’s lucrative working waterfronts are to be ready for storms that are growing more severe with climate change.

“Increased contractor capacity, particularly in marine construction and the engineering, planning, and permitting components of these projects, will be critical,” according to the new four-year climate action plan released this month by the administration of Gov. Janet Mills

The report calls for studying the recent storms and working with industries, organizations and community colleges to expand the number of builders who can do coastal construction. More broadly, it calls for creating opportunities for 7,000 new registered apprentices to serve as the state’s “climate-ready workforce” by 2030 and increasing the number of women working in construction, among other steps.

As it stands, there are few firms that coastal property owners can look to when they are trying to rebuild from storms, according to Linda Nelson, economic and community development director in the fishing port of Stonington, where the busy local lobster co-op suffered hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage in January.

“There is Prock Marine and there is Prock Marine, pretty much, and if you can get Prock Marine, if you have a job that’s big enough and lucrative to get on their schedule, great,” said Nelson, who also is co-chair of a state commission that’s studying how to make Maine’s infrastructure more resilient against similar storms.

But, Nelson went on, Maine will need more “human and financial resources” to quickly repair roads, docks, bridges and other infrastructure that are essential to Maine’s peninsula and island communities in the wake of severe storms. There’s also the broader challenge of rebuilding that infrastructure so that it’s higher and more protected from future damage.

There are several things that make marine construction more laborious than traditional land-based projects, including additional permitting requirements, the need to work off barges, and the difficulty of ensuring that structures will sit level on the ocean floor while withstanding tides, corrosion and other forces.

At Prock Marine, Kelly said there is no “silver bullet” to bringing in more workers, but he welcomes the efforts of the state and private organizations to create more of a pipeline for young Mainers to join the trades. He is now working with the state Labor Department to start the company’s own apprenticeship program.

He’s hopeful that more students coming up through the state’s schools will see the value of receiving vocational training and entering the trades, particularly at an established company where they can receive ongoing training and mentorship as well as a full set of benefits.

“Now the trick is to get the people who are interested to walk through the door to fill out an application,” he said.