Back to Penobscot Bay Blog
***Back to Friends of Penobscot Bay
Kidder Point Legacy Shoreline Waste Remediation Project.
At Issue. Kidder Point's shore received thousands of tons of highly acidic waste laid down on wooden cribs during 30 years of superphosphate fertilizer production for Maine's potato industry, and alum production for Maine's paper industry. See expansion of the point into the harbor in aerial photos from 1940 and 2011. Wastes are up to 18 feet thick on the now rotting wooden cribs now lining the shore. Some wastes are mildly radioactive. Some acidic. Some alkaline. None should be eroding into Penobscot Bay.
See
a large 1993 map of then-Delta Chemical's waste sites and landfills .
Soils covering some of the shoreline dumps have failed allowing a large amount of phosphogypsum and bauxite to erode and leach back into the intertidal flats of a semiconfined cove adjacent to the site.Kidder Point's shallow groundwater flows into Stockton Harbor via intertidal seeps. This groundwater has high levels of sulfate and is very acidic due to 1984 spill from acid tank.
The Goal: Get GAC and other responsible parties to examine, trim back and re-landscape eroding shorelines to contain wastes deposited there to end their erosion.
