NNEPRA has now failed twice to secure a stormwater management permit for the 60,000 square foot train garage it proposes for Brunswick West.

Typically, NNEPRA gets what it wants — like a “finding of no significant impact” for a project that relocates a massive facility from an industrial site in Portland to a residential neighborhood in Brunswick. Impacted neighbors usually don’t stand a chance when confronted with byzantine regulatory processes, impenetrable technical jargon, and well-connected agencies with powerful lobbying arms.

This time, though, regulators are raising serious concerns about NNEPRA’s application. Two examples:

1. Soil tests from the site have found high concentrations of lead and arsenic, heavy metals such as barium and mercury, and carcinogenic hydrocarbons. During building and operation, the facility will generate stormwater runoff that will also contain diesel fuel, oil, and exhaust. NNEPRA proposes that this water will be sent into a nearby stream, and eventually into the town’s sewers. This will impact not only nearby home drinking wells, but Brunswick’s entire water system. Amazingly, NNEPRA offered no plan to cope with this.

2. In 2011, NNEPRA submitted a Voluntary Response Action Plan to the state’s Department of Environmental Protection. This program permits agencies to avoid trouble with the DEP by agreeing to clean up contaminated sites on their own. Thus far, NNEPRA has completed none of the four tasks it proposed to undertake. NNEPRA now says that it will do so only after completing construction — a “check is in the mail” approach that the DEP rejects.

This cavalier attitude typifies NNEPRA’s actions. Maybe those used to being fastracked consider such glaring problems mere “formatting errors,” as NNEPRA Executive Director Patricia Quinn has called concerns with their applications. But to those about to bear the burdens of this project, these questions are anything but trivial.

Of course NNEPRA would like to slink past regulations with as little inconvenience as possible. But foxes do not get to write the rules of the henhouse. Regulations exist to protect communities from irresponsible development such as this. Adhering to them should not be the exception, but the rule.

This episode reveals that the hazards of this project extend far beyond Brunswick West homes. Everyone deserves to have it done right.

Matt Miller
Brunswick