Businesses pool costs for creek clean-up
Long Creek, once a pristine creek filled with native brook trout, is today a polluted, fishless waterway that meanders through the vast paved landscape of the Maine Mall, flows close to two highways, and slips past the jetport, an 18-hole golf course and industrial plants.
Rainwater here streams off parking lots, roads and rooftops, sweeping up oil, grease, sand, salt, metals and other toxins, and runs into the stream and its branches, which eventually flow to Casco Bay. Years of heavy development in the creek's watershed have badly contaminated the stream, once a popular spot for fishermen and swimmers, the Environmental Protection Agency found.
Now, though, due to the efforts of some devoted stakeholders, the creek has a chance for a new life.
"People realize we can get Long Creek in compliance if we all band together," says William Taylor, a Pierce Atwood attorney who represents 10 large landowners in the watershed, including Fairchild Semiconductor and Ocean Properties.
After holding many meetings over the past few months, the creek's stakeholders -- including four municipalities, business owners, environmental groups and state departments like the Maine Turnpike Authority -- are within days of finalizing a communal stormwater contract. Referred to as a participating landowner agreement, the document could help ensure the creek is clean within five to 10 years, according to Taylor.
The Long Creek Restoration Project is a remarkable model of how businesses, environmental groups and state and local agencies can cooperate to rectify an environmental issue -- and the project could have been much more contentious. In 2008, the Conservation Law Foundation decided to speed up the process of cleaning the watershed -- which nearby business owners, agencies and towns had already started to tackle -- by filing a petition with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA then demanded more stringent regulations for the landowners that were producing polluted runoff in the 3.5-mile Long Creek watershed. Yet, even then, all stakeholders continued to cooperate to come up with a plan.
"I think overall [the restoration project] has been a pretty good example of how business and environmental groups like ours can work together," says Sean Mahoney, vice president of Maine's Conservation Law Foundation. "I think that the business groups could have challenged the finding and taken legal action, and I think the same is true with the Conservation Law Foundation."
He continues, "We agreed to work with the stakeholder groups -- municipalities and businesses, Maine [Department of Environmental Protection], and EPA and other groups -- to come up with a plan for how best to meet the goals of the Clean Water Act while at the same time doing it in the most timely, cost-efficient manner possible."
The participating landowner agreement gives landowners who have an acre or more of impervious surface the option of obtaining a general stormwater permit rather than an individual one. All landowners, regardless of the restoration project, are already required to have a stormwater management plan, which includes pollution blocks like infiltration ponds and tree buffers -- but the agreement will allow businesses and municipalities to pool their resources and reduce individual costs.
An individual stormwater permit could cost as much as $15,000 to $30,000 for a business to meet environmental standards, Taylor says. On the other hand, a company that has a general five-year permit will pay $3,000 per acre of impervious surface, he explains.
"They can do things faster, better and cheaper if everyone works together," Taylor says. He anticipates that between 75% and 80% of the 105 participating landowners will sign up for a general permit.
This fee will go into a Long Creek management fund that will cover such things as more stormwater controls, streambank restoration, and a shared "housekeeping" service to sweep streets and maintain drains. Taylor says the fund could collect between $12 million and $15 million over 10 years, and the group could also attract grants and outside funding.
"Wal-Mart or a shopping center will pay more," he says. "Even nonprofit buildings, like schools and churches, will pay a fee because it is not a tax, and that makes it equitable because rain doesn't fall more on some than others."
Taylor says he's optimistic that in five years, the creek will be noticeably improved and that Long Creek could be an example for other "urban-impaired streams."
"There are 31 other streams in Maine like Long Creek," Taylor says. "This model will hopefully be used; it is a good model."
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