Behind the justified outcry following the recent chemical spill at Brunswick Landing is a smaller, but no less potent story of loss and waste. Eighty percent of the Landing’s stormwater drains into a stormwater system that sends its flow into a chain of ponds — Pond A, Pond B, Pond Area C and Picnic Pond — whose waters flow then into Mere Brook and, finally, Harpswell Cove. Most of the spill’s 50,000 gallons of fire-fighting foam and water entered that stormwater system. But before that spill, another clean-up effort had aimed at polluted sediments accumulated over the years in those ponds, and, as of January, 2024, that work had been largely completed. 

On maps and in Navy literature, the channel for the stormwater system is a once-upon-a-stream now called Unnamed Brook. Nameless, fameless, but not blameless, Unnamed is born of an outfall from pipes running under the runaways and the Landing’s buildings. There, the flow runs into Pond A, a narrow back-up of 75-or-so yards of water behind a dam of earth and crushed rock. Beneath that 5-foot berm is Pond B. A larger, longer (150 yard) pond, this gathering backs up behind a broader dam of similar composition. The water then flows from culvert to culvert and under a road into Pond area C, which never got fully dammed and flooded into life. Next up on the Unnamed water-triptyk is Picnic Pond, where it joins Merriconeag Stream. Beyond that? Confluence with Mere Brook and, finally, Harpswell Cove. 

But before we get our waters together, we need to know why Unnamed has its ponds. A and B (and, potentially, C) were imposed on Unnamed in the late 1990s when the Navy sought to devise a stormwater system that would filter out pollutants, and, in the event of emergency, contain chemical spills. The idea was simple: dam Unnamed in two places, thereby creating Ponds A and B; when a storm’s water builds, falls into storm drains and then rushes from the outfall, it will encounter the ponds. The ponds will slow the water, and what was muscular water able to carry sediments and pollutants will grow flaccid. It will lay its burdens down. And so the nasty chemicals will collect in the ponds, but most won’t run down into the pond of last resort, Picnic Pond, and from there to the sea. 

To some extent that idea has worked. As the Navy has prepared to relinquish ownership of these ponds and adjacent lands, it has also contracted for some remedial work on Unnamed and its ponds. In 2019, The Navy proposed and then began removal of a sediment layer that was unsafe to touch or flush in all 3 ponds. The dredging out and shipping away of tons of the toxic sediment and laying of in a clean layer of sand theoretically restored and capped each pond. The Navy contractors began this work in the fall of 2022, and the price tag placed on it then was about $5 million.  

That work’s been largely completed, and behind it was the hope that the Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority (MRRA) would accept ownership of the adjacent land and Unnamed’s watershed system. 

There’s been a rub, however. (By this point in the story, you expected such friction.) Enter a new family of pollutants (PFAS) not sought in the earlier sediment-removal: thousands of gallons of PFAS-laced runoff from the recent spill of fire-fighting foam and water. It, as the foam rising from the stormwater system indicated, has flowed powerfully into the detoxed ponds. Clearly, as monitoring has indicated, Ponds A, B and Picnic are toxed anew. As will be their sediments and contribution to Mere Brook and Harpswell Cove.  

That sound of flowing liquid? That too would be the wash of millions of dollars of work being flushed away. 

Do not we owe our waters and fellow citizens more care? 

Here, perhaps as needed antidote, is a small, but happy, story: 

There are three new benches in the Town Commons, sitting spots where, to my knowledge, there have never been any. Comfortable, well-located at corners/intersections, the benches are also assembled attractively with wooden pegs to hold their slats in place. I wrote to a member of the Town Commons Committee asking about the benches; here’s what I got back: “Dennis Wilson, Brunswick town arborist and staff liaison to the Town Commons Committee, had three surplus benches refurbished and placed there over Labor Day Weekend. During a recent amble, I noticed the green paint job spilled over from the wooden parts of the benches. It looked rather Jackson Pollock-like.” And, to my eye, the splashes of paint blended with the forest. 

I tried out a bench the other day, and as I sat there, I felt an ease descend, backgrounded by insect-hum; 15 fine minutes passed before I rose from the spell and walked on through one of our town’s best gifts to us all. 

 Sandy Stott is a Brunswick, Maine resident, chair of the town’s Conservation Commission, chair also of The Mere Brook Steering Committee, and a member of Brunswick Topsham Land Trust’s Board of Directors. He writes for a variety of publications. He may be reached at fsandystott@gmail.com