Former Berlin Mill Poses Environmental Risk
WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 – The site of a former paper mill in Berlin has been leaking mercury into the Androscoggin River, creating a high level of ecological risk and raising possible health concerns, according to Environmental Protection Agency officials.
“This is a very unique site, unique on a national level,” said Andrew Hoffman of the New Hampshire Environmental Services Department, who has been assisting the EPA. “There is mercury at other sites in New Hampshire, but not at this level and not so close to a river.”
More that 2.5 pounds of mercury were removed from the site earlier this year, and the EPA has since put it on the National Priority List of Superfund Sites, a register of the nation’s most contaminated areas for which the agency cannot find a private entity legally responsible to pay for the cleanup of the contamination.
The addition brings the number of long-term New Hampshire Superfund Sites to 22.
The site in Berlin is a former chlor-alkali facility used from the late 1800s to 2001 to whiten paper by sending an electric charge from a mercury cathode, or cell, into a brine of sodium chloride. The electrochemical reaction would create the chlorine gas needed to bleach paper.
When the cathode needed to be replaced with new mercury, the old mercury was disposed of on the property. Because the site was used so frequently in the years before hazardous disposal regulations were instituted, decades of disposed mercury remain as contaminants.
“Mercury can be found at the site in its elemental form,” said Daryl Luth, the EPA official in charge of the site. “You can actually see the little globules of mercury coming out of the bedrock” near the river.
Because the 4 1/2-acre facility abuts the eastern bank of the Androscoggin, Hoffman says that the mercury globules along the river are evidence that the mercury made its way into the water.
“In 1999, the site was capped [with landfill] and a slurry wall was put in place,” Hoffman said. “But that didn’t stop the mercury from making its way into the Androscoggin River.”
The danger with mercury in a river is that it will become “mentholated” by microbes in the water and transform into methylmercury, a highly toxic form of organic mercury that can work its way into the food chain by way of fish and drinking water, Luth said.
While both Luth and Hoffman maintain there is no reason for Berlin residents to be alarmed, they say people should heed the catch-and-release fishing advisory for the Androscoggin and should not wade into the river or drink from it.
“You can’t deny that there are certain health risks from eating fish, drinking water or some dermal exposure to sediment [in the Androscoggin],” Hoffman said. “There is still quite a bit of mercury making it into the river.”
Methylmercury has been linked to brain damage in people of all ages and poses a particular risk to the unborn children of expectant mothers, according to the EPA.
“This is the newest priority for the EPA in New Hampshire,” Luth said. “There is an investigation searching for responsible parties, but it does look somewhat dire.”
The facility changed hands several times over the years, its most recent owner being the Pulp and Paper Company of America, which went bankrupt in the summer of 2001, Hoffman said.
While most of Pulp and Paper was purchased by Fraser Papers Inc. in 2002, Fraser did not absorb the contaminated chlor-alkali facility in Berlin, leaving the state and federal government in charge of financing the cleanup with taxpayer dollars.
Now that the area has been designated a Superfund Site, approximately 90 percent of the cleanup cost will be paid by the federal government, with the remaining 10 percent coming from the state.
“People in Alaska and Kansas will be paying for it as well as people in New Hampshire,” said Tad Furtado, the policy director for Rep. Charles Bass, whose 2 nd Congressional District contains the chlor-alkali facility. “The next step is making sure the state has appropriate support for the funding it needs.”
Both Hoffman and Luth say they expect the cleanup to be long and expensive because of the level of contamination.
“It will take many years, a decade or more,” Hoffman said. “I would hope that at least in five years we will have stopped the mercury from moving into the river.”
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