University Nuclear Waste Dump | Greenbush

When I was a kid my best friend and his older brother insisted there was a veritable junkyard full of army surplus vehicles in the woods somewhere in the outer rim known as the Cards Ridge Road. This piqued my interest even then, and a mysterious chain link fence in the woods just outside of our ability to perceive it through the trees seemed to lend legitimacy to the story. 

What lies somewhere under this old tree nursery?

What I found wasn't a rusty remnants of Reagan era relics rotting in repose out in the woods, but rather another type of Cold War era artifact. 

Eighteen years worth of radioactive waste and laboratory chemicals (including the nuclear weapons ignition component tritium), buried in secret by the University of Maine in what was at the time a tree nursery. Eighteen years worth of radioactive waste and laboratory chemicals dumped without the consent of those living nearby. It took the University of Maine twenty two years to even test the site and they only agreed to continue doing so because of the 'psychological impact' of their deceit.

The Maine Department of Environmental Protection removed a lot of the mystery for me. Their KMZ file for Google Earth robbed me of the thrill of peering through the woods and seeing an empty, fenced in plot in the middle of the woods just to the north of the tree nursery site. The state classifies the site as this --

APPROX. 200 GALLONS OF TOLUENE MIXED W/LOW-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTES WERE BURIED AT THIS SITE IN 5-GALLON METAL CANS.RADIOACTIVE WASTES CONSIST PRIMARILY OF HYDROGEN AND CARBON ISOTOPES IN AMOUNTS OF 22-80 MILLICURIES. SITE 40'X40'.

From the thirteen years of newspaper articles I've found, the 'radioactive wastes' were reported by locals to be anything from 'experimental animals' (whatever that means) to low level isotopes. The Old Town-Orono Times also reported the presence of tritium - which was used in early nuclear weapons as an ignition agent.

That being said, here is all of the information I've been able to gather on this site: 

• 7/24/1980 - Letter to the editor: Everything To Lose (BDN) - Here is a letter form an upset resident of a neighboring town. The letter describes the dump as 'like a small 50x50 foot burial plot with yearly markers going back to the 1960s and "said to consist" of remains of "experimental animals" and "low level isotopes." The letter reveals that the dump was administered by Professor Gordon Ramsdell and gives us a clue as to its physical location: "high on a hill 150' from Spring Bridge Road" and "a quarter mile uphill from" their "familys spring" - which may be an error since the dump is allegedly located on the site of the old State Tree Nursery and Spring Bridge turns to Goulds Ridge north of East Ridge. While interesting I take the letter with a grain of salt as it ends with a reference to Revelation 12:12....although considering Gordon Ramsdell's expertise is apparently food science I'm not sure what to believe with this one...
• 7/24/1980 - Atlantic is Radioactive Waste Dump; effects unclear (Lewiston Daily Sun), while the majority of the content in this article relates to larger scale nuclear waste, the author acknowledges that lower level waste is buried -- singling out the Greenbush site among greater national concerns.
• 12/15/1982 - No Cover Yet for Nuclear Waste Site in Greenbush (Old Town-Orono Times) - The state had realized they needed to install test wells (22 years after the university had begun to dump there) but had yet to actually cover the burial area with something other than water-permeable earth. The article reveals that there are four wells surrounding the site as well as a number of wells about a half mile away from the site. 
• 7/6/1983 - Cover Installed over Low Level Nuclear Waste Site (Old Town-Orono Times) - A heavy polyethelene cover and several feet of dirt were placed over the waste barrels to prevent the containment from degrading. 
• 3/11/1987 - Greenbush Meeting on Radioactive Dump Site (Old Town-Orono Times) - Is an article about plans for a potential new dump site, but pays lip service to the fact that Greenbush was the "unwitting host" of UMO's radioactive landfill. 
• 3/11/1987 - University Agrees to Monitor Greenbush Landfill Site (Old Town-Orono Times)- The article reveals that Carbon 14 and tritium were dumped at the site. Also reveals that the university only agreed to monitor the site going forward because of the 'psychological impact' on the town. 
• 8/10/1990 - Radioactive Waste Panel to Meet (BDN) - In which a group of folks from Augusta make the trek up to Greenbush to visit the site. This article gives the dates of usage for the site as a dump as 1960-1978. The article also reveals that the university never officially 'closed' the site until by legislative order in the early 1990s. It was still uncertain at this point whether or not the university was going to remove the waste or leave it there. 
• 12/30/1992 - Dumps Dominate Greenbush Discussion (BDN) - This article gives us some idea of the physical attributes and contents of the low level nuclear waste dump. Most interesting perhaps is the disclosure of the dimensions of the dump as 40'x40' and the presence of four above ground test wells as well as description of its contents of 'laboratory chemicals' and 'radioactive waste.' 
• 12/30/1992 - Greenbush to Discuss Waste Sites (BDN) - gives us another interesting tidbit in that it reveals the waste is still present to this day as it was declared too dangerous to remove. 
• 10/05/1993 - Greenbush Grants Tax Abatements Because of Computer Errors on Bills may seem like your average story of a backwater town struggling to adapt to the digital age. However it provides one key detail: the material is still present. The article explains that the state tree nursery was sold in 1993 but that the state retained possession of the parcel under which the dump lies. (I tried to determine its location via tax maps, but being such a small town no such information is on the internet.) The story characterizes the dumps contents as "hazardous and radioactive waste." 

In short, at least the University of Maine did the least they could do - only after public outcry.