Fairfield residents worry about the long-term impact of PFAS on their health and properties Author: Vivien Leigh (NEWS CENTER Maine) Published: 10:29 AM PDT May 3, 2021 Updated: 12:19 PM PDT May 6, 2021
FAIRFIELD, Maine
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The Somerset County town of Fairfield remains at the center of the largest state investigation into so-called forever chemicals.
PFAS compounds are a class of industrial chemicals found in a number of household products. But they don t naturally break down and there s no known way to destroy them.
Tests of private wells show alarming levels of the compounds, linked in federal studies to cancer, low birth weight, and other serious health problems.
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Marine Resources commissioner says agency is pulling proposed amendment to Kennebec River Management Plan
The agency will start again to create a fisheries management plan that will likely take into consideration the information it received from more than 1,100 comments, the most it has ever seen.
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The 170-mile long Kennebec River starts at Moosehead Lake and flows to the Atlantic Ocean. The Maine Department of Marine Resources is taking a step back from its amendment to the river plan that calls for the possible removal of four dams owned by a Canadian company, including the Lockwood Dam in the foreground and the Hydro Kennebec Dam in the distance.
Maine homeowners seek more time to sue over chemical contamination Everything has been taken away, and there’s nothing that we did, said one Fairfield homeowner whose land and water are contaminated by the forever chemicals known as PFAS.
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Catherine Harrington stands in her yard on Howe Road in Fairfield in January, near fields where sludge was kept and spread for years.
Michael G. Seamans/Morning Sentinel
Thirty years ago, Bruce Harrington was so concerned about the sludge being spread as fertilizer on a farm near his family’s Fairfield home that he confronted the drivers of the trucks literally “drooling” with the foul-smelling waste.
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The Somerset County paper mill now the subject of a class-action lawsuit says it “strongly disputes” allegations that its facility has led to so-called “forever chemicals” contaminating a growing number of residential water wells in the Fairfield area.
Sappi North America, the company that owns the Skowhegan mill, made the statement Monday following the filing of a lawsuit that alleges the mill is the source of high levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl compounds, known as PFAS, in a growing number of wells.
“Sappi has not been served with the lawsuit and has not yet had the opportunity to review it in detail,” Sappi spokesperson Olga Karagiannis wrote in a response Monday. “Sappi strongly disputes any contention that Sappi’s Somerset mill is the source of PFAS contamination in Fairfield. Sappi is well known for its record of environmental stewardship at the Somerset mill and at all of its manufacturing facilities.”
A new lawsuit claims that a Skowhegan paper mill is responsible for the toxic chemicals that are now being found in dangerous levels in the well water of a