Caribou company awarded brownfield contract

   CARIBOU, Maine — A Caribou company has been selected to conduct environmental assessments as part of the Northern Maine Development Commission’s (NMDC) Brownfield program.
During the Nov. 13 NMDC Executive Board meeting, directors approved a contract with County Environmental Engineering.
NMDC received a $200,000 cooperative agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to complete studies.
“Assessments will be completed on sites thought to be contaminated with hazardous substances and several sites must be identified meth labs,” said NMDC Senior Planner Jay Kamm.
Kamm said NMDC received two excellent bids, but after a thorough review and scoring process, County Environmental Engineering was the clear choice.
A brownfield is a property, the expansion, redevelopment or reuse of which, may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant or contaminant.
Beginning on Oct. 1, NMDC started an extensive clean-up project throughout Aroostook County on brownfields that are designated as former methamphetamine labs. Through the Brownfield Program, NMDC hopes to turn these properties, which may now have a sort of stigma attached to them, into real estate that can once again be marketable.
Many people may wonder what happens to these locations after the criminals are caught and the drugs are seized. NMDC officials say there is great concern about public safety regarding these properties. Kamm explained during an NMDC executive board meeting in October, that in conversations with code enforcement officers, lending institutions and others there’s still a real problem with redeveloping these properties.
“Maine DEP does a great job at cleaning these up but there’s still that stigma attached of what’s the residual effects,” said Kamm.
Since NMDC has received the $200,000 from the EPA to conduct brownfield assessments, they have already began working on three different meth labs. While this is the third time NMDC has received this type of grant, it’s the first time they’ll be using it to specifically clean up former drug manufacturing locations.
Kamm added that the funding will look at the long-term impacts of the chemical process used to make methamphetamine and what actually happens inside the building.
“They do get a clean bill of health when the DEP is done cleaning them up, but there is a concern of how those chemicals actually get into the sheet rock or into the flooring or things like that, and is there a long term release back into the air or to the soil and people are concerned and unsure of whether or not they want to live in these former meth labs.”
Kamm explained that the overall goal over the brownfield program is to bring a vacant building or property back onto the tax rolls. He added that it also helps to boost economic development.
“The grant we received from the EPA doesn’t actually afford us the ability to clean up these sites, but it allows us to undergo the assessment process, which basically means we can establish a plan for the clean-up process,” said Kamm. “It’s really an assessment of what exactly is at the site, on the ground, and what needs to be done to clean the site up. Then, once that is done, we can look forward to getting the necessary funding for the clean-up process itself.”
Kamm believes that the program has been highly successful in refurbishing vacant properties in the past. He added that this will be an exciting new chapter of turning something negative into a real positive.
“Our goal isn’t to clean these sites up 85 or 90 percent, because the public perception would still be that they may be unsafe. Our goal is to make these sites 100 percent safe and ready for use,” Kamm added. “We obviously can’t do all that with $200,000, but through groups like County Environmental Engineering, we are on the right track to help get the necessary funding for the actual clean-up process, which will be phase 2 of this project.”