March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

The Department of Environmental Protection has determined that most small town dumps in Maine do not meet a new set of non-polluting standards, and has been mandating that the dumps close. Almost all towns have found it impossible to come into compliance with the DEP requirements for a dump, and they have resorted to trucking trash to incinerator facilities. The incinerator facilities make the trash go out of sight and possibly out of mind.

Incinerators use pure breathable oxygen to burn all types of trash including disposable batteries, glossy printer’s ink, wood products glued together with epoxy and formaldehyde, plastics, rubber, polyester clothing and furniture, and anything else that will catch fire and disperse cancer-causing heavy metals and aromatic hydrocarbons into the atmosphere. As a result, it is impossible to take a breath of clean air or eat more than one fish from a lake or stream in most of northern Maine without facing the risk of cancer.

It only takes a college education in chemistry, physics or engineering to manufacture most of the goods that eventually wind up as garbage, but it takes many different kinds of scientists to understand the damage that burning trash causes to human health, and to the health of this planet. Fortunately, scientists’ findings are put into TV documentaries, and newspaper and magazine reports that explain why fish aren’t safe to eat, why the planet is warming up and weather patterns are changing, and why our lakes are acidifying and dying.

The DEP should assist towns with the process of finding a “non-polluting” means of dealing with trash; then it might be appropriate to mandate that towns come into compliance. Presently, I think most residents of Maine who are forced to haul their trash to an incinerator realize that the DEP has not lived up to their mandate to “protect the environemnt.” … Bob Costa Perry


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