BANGOR (AP) – The city of Bangor and the owner of the former Bangor Gas Works are awaiting a federal judge’s verdict on who must pay to clean up a coal-tar deposit in a waterfront redevelopment area in the Penobscot River.

U.S. District Judge George Singal last week heard closing arguments in the three-week trial held without a jury last September in Bangor and Portland. The case involved dozens of witnesses and more than 1,000 pieces of evidence.

The cost of the remediation is estimated to run between $12 million and $20 million.

In a 2002 lawsuit against Citizens Communications Co. of Stamford, Conn., the successor of a series of corporate entities that owned and operated Bangor Gas Works, the city claimed that the plant was the sole cause of the pollution.

Citizens denied responsibility for the pollution in the Dunnett’s Cove section of the river. It filed a dozen third-party lawsuits alleging that others, including the city, should pay for the cleanup because they were to blame for the 10-acre, plume-shaped coal-tar deposit.

Shaw’s Supermarket on Main Street now occupies part of the site where Bangor Gas Works once removed usable gas from coal, supplying the gas to the city. The residue from gasification was a tar substance stored in tanks at the facility.

The city’s attorney, William Devoe of Bangor, argued in a post-trial brief that sediments at the bottom of Dunnett’s Cove reveal tar types made by the gas works and that stratifications of the tar at the outfall of the Davis Brook Sewer reflect changes in the types of tar emanating from the plant.

Martha Gaythwaite, Citizens’ Portland attorney, dismissed the city’s theories as mere speculation. She argued in her brief that none of the city’s records “depict a physical connection between the gas works and the sewer” and that the state Department of Environmental Protection failed to find a sewer when it excavated the site in 1980.

More credible sources of the pollution, Gaythwaite suggested, include the former Maine Central Railroad yard, the city’s coal-tar tanks operated on the riverbank, fires on the coal docks in the late 1940s and the bulkhead adjacent to the cove that was discovered in spring 2005.

If Singal finds that both the city and Citizens were partially responsible for the pollution, he would have to determine the amount and toxicity contributed by each, their abilities to pay for remediation and the degree to which they have cooperated in the effort to investigate the tar deposit.

The recommended remedy, approved in August by the DEP but not yet approved by the judge or the parties, would consist of isolating the contaminated area, filling in part of the river to prevent migration of contaminants and stabilizing the sediment permanently.

The second phase of the trial would decide the remedy. A third phase would determine what portion of the cleanup costs third parties would have to pay for, unless Singal concludes that the city, Citizens or both were the only parties responsible for the pollution.

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Information from: Bangor Daily News, http://www.bangornews.com

AP-ES-01-02-06 1040EST

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