RUMFORD – A sign in front of No View Greenhouses on South Rumford Road on Tuesday said the organic farming business was closed due to the June 22 red dye spill.
Greenhouse owner Annette Marin of 855 South Rumford Road could not be contacted Tuesday for comment about the situation.
The sign states: “Dear Customers, We are closed due to the dye spill. The dye is not approved for food use by the (Food and Drug Administration). Sorry for the inconvenience.”
Another farmer, Lloyd Billings of Milton Township, whose hay crops were affected by the spill, declined comment Tuesday afternoon on the situation.
But last week, Thomas Smith, an oil and hazardous materials specialist with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection in Augusta, said farmers with crops along the road have been asked by the Maine Department of Agriculture to voluntarily destroy them.
The spilled chemical is a paper products liquid dye known as Cartasol Red 9BL, a nontoxic organic, water-based chemical, said Norman Haggan, regional manager of the Maine Department of Transportation in Dixfield.
Haggan said last week that the dye consists of 88 percent water, 4 percent salt, and 6 percent organic, biodegradable red dye.
The problem, however, Smith and Haggan said, is that the dye is not graded for food.
“The Department of Agriculture would say that because this was not approved for food, you can’t sell (the crops). Any additive put on food must be designated as safe,” Smith said.
Agriculture Department officials, he said, “would consider the food crops to be adulterated, so they’d ask them to destroy the crops voluntarily, so it doesn’t get into the food market.”
Smith said the heaviest impact of the spill occurred on the end of South Rumford Road, where Billings harvests hay and where Marin does organic farming.
According to Rumford police and Smith, on June 22, a tractor-trailer owned by Con-Way Central Express of Michigan and operated by Thomas Boisvert, 58, of New Hampshire, was taking a barrel of red dye from Portland to NewPage Corp. paper mill in Rumford.
Smith said a latch holding a removable lid on the open-top drum apparently bounced loose, splashing several gallons of the dye along a 12-mile stretch of the road, and on pedestrian Michael Keeley of Rumford.
“A really, really small drop of the dye goes a long way,” Smith said of the bright red, “scary looking” substance that area residents saw that day.
Keeley declined to comment on the matter when contacted last week.
Connie Knight, spokeswoman for Clariant Corp. of Charlotte, N.C., the company that makes the red dye for use in paper products, said last week that the company is holding its contracted transportation company, Con-Way Central Express, liable for damages caused by the spill and for cleanup costs.
Con-Way spokesman Joe DeLuca in Michigan denied comment late Tuesday afternoon on Knight’s statement. He also declined to comment about any possible settlements regarding the spill.
Clariant, Knight said, hired HMHTTC Response Inc. of North Carolina to clean up the mess as soon as it learned of it. That company, in turn, subcontracted the job out to Enpro Services of Maine Inc. of South Portland, Knight said.
“The delay in cleanup is because the trucking company didn’t notify Clariant. It’s not (Clariant’s) responsibility, but the chemical outfit did the cleanup to show that it was going to do the right thing,” Haggan said.
“They responded in a big way once they knew about it,” he added.
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