Revitalized mill earns Brewer prestigious honor
December 02, 2009
In collaboration with the City of Brewer, attorneys at Eaton Peabody worked with the project developer and its counsel (Cianbro and Pierce Atwood) and the City’s environmental science consultant (Credere Associates) on this challenging and progressive Brownfields redevelopment project. With the team, we worked on this vital redevelopment project that brought the rebirth of a former paper manufacturing site as a new steel modular manufacturing facility that employs over 500 workers in the City. In direct support of South Brewer Redevelopment (SBR) and Old Mill Redevelopment (two member-owned limited liability companies established by the City), Eaton Peabody provided environmental law advice and advanced the effort to secure essential Brownfields redevelopment funding. With an excellent public-private partnership between SBR and Cianbro, the team managed to overcome substantial risks associated with significant residual environmental conditions on the site. Along with our partners and EPA-New England, we were able to access substantial Brownfields redevelopment assistance to fund investigation and remediation at the existing site. Utilizing the Maine VRAP Program, a voluntary response action plan implemented by Cianbro addressed the environmental conditions to the satisfaction of MDEP and EPA-New England. Since its rebirth, the new facility has shipped many modules for a new refinery being constructed in Port Arthur, Texas. Along with partners and representatives of the environmental agencies, Eaton Peabody celebrates EPA’s Phoenix Award for a project that has brought a rebirth of the working community along the beautiful Penobscot River where we live and recreate.
Courtesy of the Bangor Daily News
By Nok-Noi Ricker
BDN Staff
BREWER, Maine — There are empty hulls of once prosperous paper making and textile mills all over Maine and New England that were abandoned decades ago and left to deteriorate with no hope of a future.
City leaders did not want that to happen with the Eastern Fine Paper Co. mill, which closed in January 2004, especially since half-buried hazardous waste, leaky oil tanks and other environmental dangers were left behind.
City officials took quick action and applied for state and federal cleanup funds to mitigate the hazards and now the site is home to Cianbro’s Eastern Manufacturing Facility, which employs more than 500 skilled workers.
“The Brownfields program and the support of the EPA, as well as the DEP, were critical to getting this project off the ground,” Tanya Pereira, economic development specialist, said Wednesday by phone from New Orleans.
Pereira and D’arcy Main-Boyington, Brewer’s economic development director, and others involved in the city’s massive cleanup project went to Louisiana to attend the Brownfields 2009 conference and accept The Phoenix Award, a prestigious honor given to individuals and groups that “solve critical environmental challenges of transforming blighted and contaminated areas into productive new uses,” the Phoenix Award Web site states.
The city took over ownership of the mill property in May 2004 and formed South Brewer Redevelopment LLC to assume responsibility for owning and redeveloping the site.
SBR and the city then successfully applied for more than $2 million in Brownfields cleanup funds from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state funds that were used to mitigate the hazards.
Brownfields are abandoned, idled or underused industrial or commercial facilities where expansion or redevelopment is complicated by environmental contamination.
The goal of the Brownfields program is to make sure chemicals and other hazardous materials are cleaned up so the facility does not pose a threat to the environment or nearby homes.
The hazardous waste probably would have scared most developers away — including Pittsfield-based Cianbro Corp., which has changed the former mill into a module manufacturing facility — had it not been for the city’s efforts to attain cleanup funds from state and federal agencies.
The South Brewer site’s contamination “was by far the biggest obstacle we had, as it is with any mill site anywhere,” Main-Boyington has said.
Brewer’s undertaking also is one of the largest industrial cleanup projects ever done in Maine. It is the only Maine cleanup project ever to be selected for The Phoenix award.
Tom Ruksznis, Cianbro project manager for site development; Ken Grey of the Portland law firm Pierce Atwood; Andy Hamilton and Heather Parent from the Eaton Peabody law firm of Bangor; and Rip Patten, Theresa Patten, Jud Newcomb, and Rick Vandenburg from Portland environmental consulting firm Credere Associates attended the New Orleans event.
Region 1 EPA grant officer Jim Byrne also sat at the Brewer table, Pereira said.
“He fully deserves to be front and center,” she said of Byrne, who provided valuable guidance during the application process. “The funding was a huge piece in why we were able to get the project done.”
“The entire team worked well together,” she said. “It’s a huge success story.”
The Brewer-area group returned to Maine on Wednesday afternoon.
