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Long Creek Cleanup Rolls Toward Reality

January 19, 2010 - SOUTH PORTLAND -- A closely watched $14 million effort to clean up stormwater runoff in the Maine Mall area is moving quietly from theory to reality.

More than 100 landowners are expected to finalize a complex legal agreement by Friday to govern the state's first collective stream restoration project.

Meanwhile, the Legislature and municipal officials in South Portland, Portland, Westbrook and Scarborough are setting up a district and a board of directors to oversee the project, which has been more than two years in the making.

In the coming months, officials say, the new Long Creek watershed restoration district will begin collecting annual fees from landowners at a rate of $3,000 for each acre of impervious area, such as rooftops, roads and parking lots.

The money will be used over the next five to 10 years to install retention and treatment systems, plant vegetation and restore stream banks, and intensify the cleaning of streets and parking lots.

"The participating landowners' agreement is almost final. That's just a huge step," said Bill Taylor, a Portland-based attorney who represents several of the landowners in the Maine Mall area. "Everybody finally came together."

Taylor and others said they are more hopeful than ever that Long Creek and its tributaries will eventually be clean enough to remove Long Creek from the state's list of 31 most polluted urban streams. The effort already is seen as a model for other stream systems.

Long Creek's problems began when the Maine Mall was built in South Portland in 1971, beginning decades of development that has covered much of the area with buildings and pavement.

The south branch of Long Creek is now essentially a drainage ditch along the mall's perimeter road, Philbrook Avenue.

Other branches start west of the Maine Turnpike, draining stormwater from Westbrook, Scarborough and Portland, as well as South Portland.

The creek is loaded with pollutants that wash off the rooftops and pavement, including heavy metals, nutrients, chloride and hydrocarbons. The estimated cost to clean it up is $14 million.

Any new development in the watershed must include detention ponds, storage tanks or other systems for keeping dirty stormwater out of the stream and its tributaries.

The restoration plan is one of the first efforts in New England to address pollution from existing shopping centers, restaurants, office buildings, hotels, roads and other development.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, under legal pressure from the Conservation Law Foundation, is requiring landowners to join the project or clean up the stormwater runoff from their individual properties.

Landowners have until May to decide whether to join the collective effort; as many as 80 percent have already indicated they will.

The landowners would contribute $3,000 per impervious acre in the first year. The annual fee could go up in future years at slightly more than the rate of inflation.

Landowners that have already installed detention and treatment systems would get credits and pay less into the fund, according to the draft agreement.

The largest affected landowner is General Growth Properties, owner of the Maine Mall. It owns about 50 acres of impervious area, which means its first-year assessment could be as much as $150,000.

"Obviously, it's a cost we haven't had in the past. It's the law so we have to follow that. We're on board," said the mall's general manager, Craig Gorris.

He said that joining the effort will cost General Growth Properties less than trying to clean up stormwater on its own.

The average landowner would likely pay $7,000 to $10,000 an acre per year to do a solo cleanup, said Tamara Lee Pinard, who is coordinating the restoration project for the Cumberland County Soil & Water Conservation District.

"People really felt that if we got together and approached this holistically and worked on a priority basis doing the most important projects first that the end result is we can do this faster and cheaper and better," said Taylor, who represents several landowners, including Fairchild Semiconductor, Dead River Co., Transport Leasing Corp. and the owner of the Portland Marriott at Sable Oaks.

MaineToday Media Inc., publisher of the Portland Press Herald and the Maine Sunday Telegram, owns about 7 acres of impervious surface in the mall area, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection.

The landowners' long-term costs could be reduced if the watershed restoration district brings in outside funding such as federal grants. U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, has requested $5 million in federal aid for the project, according to a spokesman.

The Cumberland County Soil & Water Conservation District and South Portland have given the effort a head start by securing a $2.1 million zero-interest loan through the federal economic stimulus program.

Some of the money paid for a stormwater treatment project last fall next to the Maine Mall parking lot. Two more parking-lot projects are planned for the coming months, near other shopping centers and office buildings, Pinard said.

Sean Mahoney, a lawyer for the Conservation Law Foundation, said the group is encouraged by the cleanup plan and the fact that landowners are working together.

"We think there is good cause for cautious optimism that this is going to work," Mahoney said. "CLF wants to make sure other urban impaired streams get the same treatment. We want to make sure this one is done right so we can point to it."

By JOHN RICHARDSON, Staff Writer, Portland Press Herald, January 14, 2010


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