Augusta Maine Mill Contains Asbestos

Augusta, Maine, Mill Contains Even More Asbestos

In a problem first reported in June, and reevaluated in late August, the former Augusta Tissue mill on the Kennebec River in Augusta, Maine, has been shown to have much more asbestos than previously anticipated by engineers.

Asbestos, widely used in insulation and other building products during most of the last century, can cause lung and digestive system cancers, and is recognized as the primary cause of asbestosis and mesothelioma.

The first is a respiratory disease similar to asthma. The second, mesothelioma, is an often-lethal cancer of the mesothelial lining of the lungs and abdomen which commonly lies dormant for decades before producing symptoms severe enough to permit diagnosis. Once diagnosed, however, most patients are given between a year and 18 months to live. Fewer than 10 percent survive more than five years, and only if the cancer is caught early and treated aggressively.

In Augusta, the $25,000 set aside by the city to remove that asbestos has already been spent, according to City Manager William Bridgeo, and the dismantling of the former mill complex, known as Statler Tissue, isn't completed.

The site has been fraught with complications since its closure in 2001, when its owners, Ponderosa Paper Mill, decamped owing the city about $650,000 in taxes and interest, according to City Clerk Barbara Wardwell.

Subsequently, Augusta Tissue mill acquired the property in 2005 via an economic development arrangement offered by community activist group CSRA Help.

In 2007, Augusta Tissue Mill's prime investor, Cordova, N.C.-based Laurel Hill Paper Co., unexpectedly filed for Chapter 11.

In 2008, Select Product Group LP acquired the mill and proposed a multimillion-dollar expansion that promised to create more jobs. Operating the former Augusta Tissue mill as a napkin manufacturing facility using 100-percent recycled paper, Vice President and General Manager Frank Striplin said the operation would add another production line in 2009 that would roughly double the size of the plant at a cost of more than $20 million.

That proposal has also since fallen through, and the property seized for nonpayment of taxes. The newest asbestos assessment, by Maine's Department of Environmental Protection, identifies considerably more asbestos than previously estimated by Lewiston-based Summit Environmental Consultants Inc., and targets an actual cost closer to about $75,000.

Since the $75,000 estimate for asbestos removal is almost triple the amount estimated by Summit, and three times more than the city budgeted for, Bridgeo and other city officials have considered seeking redress from either Summit or its insurance policy under an "errors and omissions" provision. However, Bridgeo also acknowledges that Summit might not have been able to identify the newly discovered asbestos, as it was inside boilers wrapped in metal sheathing.

Demolition is now down to the last building on the site, the boiler building. Originally scheduled for completion on Sept. 1, Bridgeo now says it may take until the middle of September.

Sources: Augusta Chronicle, Kennebunkport Journal

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