Publications
Document Type
Handbook
Publication Date
2006
Abstract
It’s an old story. People have been talking about cleaning up Portland Harbor for years,” begins a Maine Sunday Telegram feature story in 1968, written by a fresh-out-of-college waterfront reporter by the name of Lance Tapley.
The story refers to “scores” of oil spills in 1967 and to an article written in 1929– found in the newspaper’s library–that describes an oil slick polluting the harbor. The 1968 story relates efforts by the Coast Guard and a recently founded group called the Portland Harbor Pollution Abatement Committee to move beyond just talking about cleaning up the harbor.
Skip forward almost 40 years to the present: The city’s plant on Munjoy Hill has been treating sewage since 1978, as has South Portland’s Waterman Drive plant. Despite 400-plus tanker visits to the port each year, oil spills are now rare. Even a huge one in 1996, when the Julie N tore into the old Million Dollar Bridge, was contained and cleaned up well enough (at a cost of $48 million) so that no ecological disaster occurred.
But the cleanup of Portland Harbor is not yet accomplished. Most noteworthy, raw human waste still pours into the harbor whenever the volume of water in a rainstorm causes Portland’s and South Portland’s sewage to back up in the sewer pipes from the treatment plants. Of the 43 combined sewer and storm-water outfalls that existed in Portland in 1991, only 11 have been eliminated to date by the replacement of single pipes by pairs of pipes–one for sewage headed for treatment and one for runoff water.
Recommended Citation
Tapley, L. (2006, December). How Clean Is Portland Harbor?. Portland Monthly Magazine, 32-35, 74-77.
Category
Casco Bay, History; Toxics
Location
Casco Bay, Portland
