OGUNQUIT — A section of Ogunquit Beach was reopened to the public on Friday, as town and state officials began concluding their investigation into the use of rat poison on the beach’s rocks.

A section of rocks along the beach’s parking lot had been under investigation by the town, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and the Maine Board of Pesticide Control after rat poison was discovered between the rocks on Aug. 9.

That section was reopened Friday, after Maine DEP spokesman David Madore said his agency had removed more than 14 pellets of rat poison from the rocks.

“The DEP is done; they’re comfortable with it,” acting Town Manager Mark O’Brien said Monday. “The Pesticide Board is fine with it, and they just have to come up with their final report.”

O’Brien said in a press release on Aug. 15 that he had become aware that the poison had been placed on the beach in response to a potential rodent problem. He ordered it to be removed.

O’Brien said Monday that he could not divulge who authorized use of the rat poison, only saying it was “a town employee, employees.”

The situation has raised questions among locals and state officials about potential rodent problems, which many have said they have never heard about at other Maine beaches.

“We’ve never heard of it on that account,” Peter Blanchard, director for the Division of Response Services for the Maine DEP, said Friday. “This is the first time that we’ve run into this, so it’s not anything we’ve encountered before … earlier in the season, there was complaints of mice and rats running around across peoples’ blankets, and one said it ran across their foot.”

O’Brien believes the demolition of two burned-out buildings along the beachfront may be to blame for an influx of rodents on Ogunquit Beach.

In April 2015, a massive fire along the waterfront destroyed the Blue Water Inn and the neighboring diner Huckleberry’s. O’Brien said the recent demolition of the scorched structures may have dislodged rat populations inhabiting the remnants.

The DEP was concerned about the poison because it was improperly handled, Blanchard said. The product, Tomcat All-Weather Bait Chunx, is a waxy substance meant to be placed inside a bait box that only rats can get into, Blanchard said.

However, Blanchard said, the product was found between the rocks, which posed tremendous health and environmental hazards.

“It was found in between the rocks in the granite. It was loose; it was not put in the bait stations the way it’s described on the label,” Blanchard said. “It is a toxic material. It’s supposed to be applied inside a bait station, a box that only rats can get into so that kids, cats, dogs and other animals couldn’t get into that.

“It causes internal bleeding, and that’s what kills the rats.”

The poison’s active ingredient, an anti-coagulant called diphacinone, isn’t just capable of killing rats, though they are the intended target. Dogs, birds and other predatory animals can be poisoned if they eat animals that have ingested the bait, according to Motomco, the product’s manufacturer.

The DEP became involved with the investigation on Aug. 9, Madore said, after receiving a call from the IFW that rat poison had been discovered along the beach.

Cpl. John MacDonald of the Maine Warden Service, a division within the IFW, said the pesticide control board, or BPC, was provided a dead seagull on Aug. 11, which may be connected to the poison’s use. As of Monday, the test results had not come back to confirm if the poison was the cause of the bird’s death.

The manufacturer explicitly states not to apply the product directly to water or to “areas where surface water is present or to intertidal areas below the mean high water mark,” and that runoff may be hazardous to aquatic organisms.

“The Maine Warden Service and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service are assisting the BPC with monitoring any future bird deaths,” MacDonald said.

MacDonald did not say if the poison’s use had violated any laws, only saying that charges will be considered if or when it is determined poison had been distributed and that birds and other animals were exposed.

“I stress that the seagull – there’s been no test results,” O’Brien said Monday.

Officials are confident the beach has been cleared of the rat poison, and that their investigations are coming to a close.

“There doesn’t seem to be any new reports of these baits being found, so we’re not planning to go back unless we’re notified,” Blanchard said. “It seems, hopefully, that it’s concluded, and there’s no more of this poison.”

— Staff Writer Alan Bennett can be contacted at 282-1535, ext. 329 or abennett@journaltribune.com.