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. 

Kingman - Township 6, Sister of Township 39

Tucked away in a corner of Penobscot county is an almost-ghost town which was for the most part destroyed in an explosion nearly identical to the theorized fire which destroyed Township 39. While there are several houses remaining all which remains of Kingman's heyday is a 120 year old rectory and the railroad which runs through it. The town -- not the rectory. 

In a sense this is a town that has disappeared from history over and over again. It was first organized as McCrillis Plantation in 1859, Independence Plantation in 1866 (after briefly being named the 429th town) and Kingman less than a decade later in 1874; it persisted for 72 years until dissolving in 1945. It has been unorganized since. 

While researching for this piece the name F Shaw piqued my interest early on. F Shaw was one of the tannery barons who ran the company town of Township 39 (if you aren't familiar with Township 39 you should probably click the link in the first paragraph before continuing. In other words spoiler warning) He was also the owner of the large tannery operating in Kingman. Township 39 was the victim of a fire in 1906 which, while not killing all of the inhabitants destroyed the economic engine of the settlement resulting in it becoming completely abandoned. A decade and a half later the town of Kingman would suffer a fire (starting at the tannery) which destroyed most homes, including the ornate Romanzo Kingman House.  Either this man had astonishingly bad luck or a fantastic insurance agent. 

The town had a population of almost 1,000 in 1900, which had reduced by over 50% due to the effects of the Great Depression and F Shaw Tannery Fire. Even during WWII there were 48 structures on main street and the block created by cross street. There are around 30 now.

A book called Modern Maine published in 1953 describes the town's economic engine as mostly lumbering/pulpwood cutting and potato farming. Aside from demography, interesting points include the fact that they apparently had to sue Penobscot County commissioners to get permission to build a road to their nearest neighbor. It managed to get its own telephone company in 1913. This was creatively named the Kingman Telephone Company. The Maine Encyclopedia has a fantastic article with a solid narrative. 

The only structure I can verify which has seen all of this is the rectory on cross street. I have a minor personal connection to this structure as I spent quite a bit of time inside it around the early 2000's. Unfortunately, this was before the advent of smartphones and I don't have any images which showcase interesting features which I recall. 

Features which include a maid staircase leading from the kitchen to a small bed room at the end of the hall. A dumbwaiter was also present however had fallen into the depths of disrepair by the time I was dating the daughter of a former owner. This house was featured on the blog Old House Dreams and hadn't changed much between the early 2000's and when the house was last sold in 2014.

You can tell this building is from another time compared to the surrounding houses due to the above features saved only in my own memory as well as the photos from the Old House Dreams blog. 

Items which stand out are the newel post, the french doors in the sitting room and the pretty delicate work around the windows. As a teenager I didn't really appreciate the features or understand that I was inside a time bubble which had seen its town's population dwindle to under 10% of the build year's population.