When Donna Chapman started looking into turning her family’s property off Route 22 in Scarborough into an equestrian center in 1998, she was surprised by what she found.

Chapman discovered she might never be able to use the property because it had been a landfill, and state regulations restrict owners from doing almost anything with landfills.

She also discovered the landfill was leaking, and the state had never given approval to close it, even though the S.D. Warren mill, which had been leasing the property, had not dumped anything on the land in at least 10 years, according to Department of Environmental Protection documents.

Now Chapman is trying to get the state and the owners of the S.D. Warren paper mill, which dumped mill waste and sludge there for years, to take responsibility for landfill, and she’s questioning the legality of the closure.

Decades of waste

The S.D. Warren mill used the 36-acre landfill between 1974 and 1988. During those 14 years, the company dumped 1 million cubic yards of waste at the site.

Most of the waste is waste paper and mill sludge – a byproduct of the paper making process. The landfill also contains, but to a lesser extent, mill trash – wood, bark, boiler ash and lime dregs.

Donna Chapman and her family own about 23 acres of the landfill. Another landowner, Elmer Larson, owns 13 acres.

Larson declined to comment for this story.

The Larson portion, then consisting of an open pit, was used from 1974 to 1978 and capped the following year, according to Department of Environmental Protection documents. The Chapman portion was filled in “cells,” which were opened and closed as needed between 1980 and 1988 and was finally capped in 1988.

However, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection never gave final approval for the closure. Although state law specifies it should have been done one year after the last deposit was made, the state is just now in the process of granting final approval for the site – nearly 20 years after the property was an active landfill.

“The rules were not as defined then as they are now,” said Randy McMullin, an environmental specialist for the Department of Environmental Protection.

Landfill not forgotten

McMullin said the owners of S.D. Warren and the Department of Environmental Protection discussed the landfill’s closure and whether it had been done according to regulations at various times after the mill stopped dumping there. S.D. Warren submitted a closure plan to the state in the early 1990s, which indicated the landfill had been closed. However, the plan didn’t meet state regulations.

McMullin said the Department of Environmental Protection never forgot about the landfill. He said the department was simply busy with other projects, such as closing the Regional Waste Systems landfill, which borders Chapman’s landfill. The department didn’t get back to working on closing Chapman’s landfill until 1998, the year Chapman started looking into possibly using the property.

Since that time, Kimberly-Clark, the paper company that purchased Scott paper, the former owner of S.D. Warren, has been monitoring the landfill to collect data that will be used as a basis for a closure plan.

In 1996, the department met with Kimberly-Clark to discuss developing a closure plan. Sappi, which then owned S.D. Warren, was not present.

Kimberly-Clark didn’t even realize it was responsible for the closure, McMullin said. But it seems the landfill was not included when Scott sold S.D. Warren to Sappi in the mid 1990s. Kimberly-Clark and Scott merged in 1995. Still, Kimberly-Clark has been proactive in working to finish the project, McMullin said.

“Sappi has always maintained that they didn’t buy the landfill,” McMullin said, adding the company felt it purchased the assets of S.D. Warren, and the landfill is not considered an asset.

Both Sappi and Kimberly-Clark are paying some costs related to the landfill. However, it’s unclear who will pay for the closure, according to Kimberly-Clark Spokesman Dave Dickson. The proposed closure and follow-up monitoring will cost about $4 million.

“Ultimately, it still needs to be decided who is going to pay for what,” he said, adding that Kimberly-Clark has decided to pay for costs now. “Kimberly-Clark, as a responsible company and one that has strong environmental principals, felt it was an appropriate step to take.”

Leaving a liability

The Larson-Chapman landfill is what’s known as an attenuation landfill, which is designed to leak, according to McMullin. In fact, the landfill is working as it was designed to, but the engineers at the time were designing landfills very differently than they are today.

One difference is the sheer size of the landfill. Attenuation landfills are built in much smaller now, McMullin said.

“Basically, if the amount of waste is small, it does not present a huge problem,” McMullin said.

Two studies conducted by Kimberly Clark in 1999 indicated “shallow groundwater quality immediately adjacent to the western boundary of the landfill is affected by the landfill.”

McMullin said on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the worst, the Larson-Chapman landfill would be a three. What’s most important to the Department of Environmental Protection, he said, is making sure the landfill is properly closed.

Chapman thinks the state was negligent in waiting so long to finally close the site. She said if the department had taken a more active interest in the landfill and it had been closed properly, the leaking may never have started.

Chapman is concerned about the environmental damage to the land and also her and her family’s long-term liability for the property.

‘They created this mess’

Through an attorney, Chapman has approached Sappi, S.D. Warren and Kimberly Clark about taking the property from the family. Sappi and S.D. Warren indicated they had no intention of taking the property, according to Chapman.

“They created the mess. They should have been forced to clean it up a long time ago,” Chapman said.

Chapman also has many questions about S.D. Warren’s lease on the property. Her uncle signed the first lease in 1977, and it was renewed in 1983.

Chapman said no one has been notifying her of decisions made about the property. In fact, she learned about the plan to close the landfill through a flyer published by a model airplane group that uses the site for their activities.

“Nobody bothered to talk with the Chapman family. We don’t even know what’s going on with our land,” Chapman said.

In 1999, an attorney told Chapman that Sappi could be held liable for harm to the environment and permanent damage to the Chapman property, according to a draft letter from the law firm that Chapman has retained.

The attorney identified eight claims that could be made against the company, including breach of contract and negligence. He estimated that the company could be liable for more than $2 million in damage claims. But Chapman could not move forward with litigation because she couldn’t afford to pay for it.

Today the landfill, which should be crowned to allow better run off, has become flat because the waste inside is decomposing and settling. This allows water to seep into the material, causing contaminants to run out.

The Chapman portion was first constructed with a bottom liner of compacted soil with a leachate – water containing contaminants that leaks from a disposal site such as a landfill or dump – collection system consisting of perforated pipes within a drainage sand layer.

The leachate collection pipes discharge into a lined leachate holding pond, which is emptied and brought to S.D. Warren’s Westbrook site for treatment in its wastewater facility.

The closure will entail removing the cap now on the landfill and increasing the grade using short paper fiber, a byproduct of the paper recycling process. Once the material is placed on top of the waste, the earth will be placed on top of it and graded. With a proper closure, McMullin thinks the groundwater quality in the area could be improved.

While Chapman is happy that the problem will be stopped, she said there is no guarantee it will last forever and the landfill will never leak again.

“The biggest concern we have is that being left to our children,” Chapman said.