Read full article by Kevin Miller (Portland Press Herald)

“AUGUSTA — State environmental officials want the authority to order companies to clean up contamination from emerging ‘forever chemicals’ or to be allowed to tap state funds for remediating contaminated sites on their own.

The Maine Department of Environmental Protection is preparing a proposal for the 2020 legislative session that officials said is needed to unbind the state’s hands when it comes to dealing with contamination from the class of chemicals known as PFAS…

The DEP already has the authority to order ‘responsible parties’ to clean up sites contaminated with a host of potential toxins such as mercury, lead or dioxin. But the department lacks that ability with PFAS because the federal government has not added the grouping to its list of potentially hazardous chemicals, and Maine’s policy mirrors the federal government’s.

The DEP proposal would broaden Maine’s list to include PFAS and future ‘pollutants and contaminants’ that emerge as concerns. That could allow the department to follow the example of other states, such as New Hampshire, that have sought to hold PFAS manufacturers or companies that used the chemicals financially responsible…

State data show that Maine’s most serious PFAS contamination sites are located at the former Brunswick Naval Air Station, former Loring Air Force Base in Limestone and at the Maine Air National Guard base in Bangor. Those sites are eligible for federal funds as part of the Defense Department’s intensive PFAS cleanup program, but test results compiled by the DEP show lesser amounts of water, soil or wildlife contamination in locations throughout Maine…

A task force created by Gov. Janet Mills earlier this year is examining the extent of PFAS contamination in Maine and recommending next steps to address the issue. The task force will begin fine-tuning those recommendations later this month ahead of an anticipated December report to Mills and lawmakers.

The DEP is pursuing its legislative proposal separately, although the task force is expected to recommend replenishing the ‘uncontrolled site fund’ used by the DEP to finance environmental cleanup projects. A proposed bond measure that included such funding failed to pass the Legislature this summer.

Mike Belliveau, executive director of the Portland-based Environmental Health Strategy Center, said he hopes the Legislature will take up another bond measure for PFAS and other environmental cleanup projects when lawmakers return to Augusta in January.

But Belliveau, who represents environmental interests on the PFAS task force, strongly supports the proposal to expand the DEP’s authority regarding PFAS contamination.

‘It’s the only way to make polluters pay for site cleanup or to access state money for cleanup,’ Belliveau said. ‘That’s the bottom line. We have leaking landfills and sludge-contaminated sites such as the Stone farm.’

Until earlier this year, much of the concern over PFAS hot spots in Maine concentrated on the former Brunswick Naval Air Station, where the Navy already has an aggressive contamination monitoring and treatment program. But that focus expanded to farms last winter when Belliveau’s group helped call attention to the plight of Fred and Laura Stone, an Arundel couple whose dairy herd, water supply and crop fields were found to have high levels of PFAS…

There is also a strong push at the federal level to add PFAS to the list of contaminants eligible for inclusion in the Superfund program that provides federal money to clean up polluted sites…

Such a change at the federal level could help address some of the regulatory issues issues that prompted the DEP’s proposed legislation. But Belliveau said the initiative is needed either way.

‘We also need the state authority,’ he said. ‘There are so many PFAS-contaminated sites in Maine, as we are learning from the task force. So the state really has its hands full and the federal (Superfund) program would not be able to address them all.'”