GAC CORP (General Alum & Chemical Corp)
Intertidal Waste Dumps ** US EPA's Report on GAC Chemical

Located in Searsport on the shore of Stockton Harbor in upper Penobscot Bay, the GAC Corporation (formerly known as General Alum & Chemical Corporation of New England) manufactures ammonium sulfate and aluminum sulfate for the paper industry and for municipal sewage treatment plants around Maine.

GAC and its predecessors on the 157 acre site have a long history of dumping industrial debris and wastes on the property's shorelineand by pipeline outfall directly into Stockton Harbor in upper Penobscot Bay.

These include:

* Decades of dumping acid-charged bauxite tailings and other debris into the intertidal flats both off kidder point and on the northeast shore of Sears Island, which were recognized in the late 1960s as among Maine's most productive.

* A crumbling bank of fill materials deposited by companies using the site over the years overlooks Stockton Harbor about a quarter mile north of the causeway. Alum production tailings and other debris (bricks, rebar, reddish sediments ), are eroding into the intertidal flats. Roughly one acre is discolored mud.

* Roofing materials have blown off the roof of a large quonset hut and other buildings near the shore and sunk into the intertidal mud, forming in some parts of the flats an impermeable layer. a few inches down.

* Oily wastes accumulating in the outfall cistern of a supposedly stormwater/grey water pipeline from the plant.

* Noncomplying licensed outfall pipe discharges.

Maine DEP Investigates.On April 16,1998, John Sowles, (then Maine DEP's marine ecologist) did a tour of these flats and shore areas 4/16/98 with Lee Doggett, (another MDEP ecologist), the Searsport clam warden, and Penobscot Bay Watch volunteers Herb Hoche, Ron Huber and Peter McFarland. Sowles describes these two places in a May 7, 98 email to MDEP land and water quality staffer Clarissa Trasko as thus.

"The sediment itself is a discolored off white creamy color in small patches up to a meter square. Just under the surface, over an area comprising about an acre, similar discolored sediment is found. Overall depths of the discolored material varied from a few millimeters to several (10) centimeters. Below the discolored material, a typical anoxic (black) sediment is found. The texture of the discolored material is similar to mud/silt,having a high water content.

"The origin of the material is probably from historic spills and slumping banks and chemical piles .An eroding slumping enbankment is immediately landward of the altered flat. This is filled land, and according to Alec [Alec Horth, then-manager of the General Alum plant], contains a creamy/light rose colored bauxite. Presumably the beach and flat contains this same material."

Read April 1998 Field Investigation Reports by John Sowles and by Lee Doggett

While the Maine Department of Environmental Protection has occasionally levied fines on the company, hyperacidic discharges, and erosion of tailings into what was once one ofPenobscot Bay's best clamflats continued.

Conservation Law Foundation weighs in. On October 3, 2001 Conservation Law Foundation filed a notice of intent to sue General ALUM (GAC) for past and ongoing violations of the federal Aclean Water Act. A year later, 10/9/02, CLF reached a settlement with GAC Chemical Corporation

Attorney Fleming noted that the company's spill containment protocols continue to be insufficient. On April 19th and 20th, he noted, the company spilled 800 gallon sulfuric acid into Penobscot Bay.

Fleming said that CLF's examination of pollution concerns at the General Alum site followed a 1998 investigation by area watchdog group Penobscot Bay Watch that led to the company having to remove thousands of gallons of oily wastes from a crumbling catchbasin perched a few feet away from Penobscot Bay.

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