I own a lethal weapon of vast potential.

There is a Maine state agency that seems to have no regard for that fact, yet it exists solely to remove and render safe such substances and is not, I must conclude, and demonstrably, really interested in removing such an awesome time bomb from my possession.

The agency? The Maine Department of Environmental Protection.

The weapon? I have owned for nearly 60 years a half-pound bottle of liquid mercury; probably enough, if properly disseminated, to cripple forever the minds and learning capabilities of countless young children.

I called the DEP several years ago asking to have this container of deadly poison removed and disposed of in some safe fashion. After many conversations with many individuals in numerous offices and various capacities at the DEP, it was left that a pickup of said container was impractical as I live a whole 40 miles from the nearest disposal site.

I must put on a wry smile, therefore, when I read of the great to-do over environmental contamination by mercury.

For all the publicity, agency posturing and lurid rhetoric, it must be probably all baloney. The agency, it seems, exists solely to keep a few more bureaucrats and civil servants ungainfully employed.

Am I cynical about this? And, pray, why not?

But it all sells newspapers, doesn’t it ?

George Stilphen, Otisfield