On a 33-acre peninsula on the Sheepscot River in Wiscasset sits a polluted old power plant that was active for decades, but that has sat empty since the late 1990s.
Now, a team of Maine developers hope to succeed where others have failed over the last few decades: in finally cleaning up the contaminated Mason Station site and making it available for other purposes that could include a marina, manufacturing and renewable energy technology.
At the same time, the town of Wiscasset is making progress on its own efforts to clean up and redevelop other sections of the peninsula that it has acquired over the years through tax foreclosure.
Opened during World War II, Mason Station generated power until the 1980s, first using coal, then oil. It was the town’s largest taxpayer for years, until Maine Yankee established its now-shuttered nuclear plant. Several harmful contaminants have been detected on the site since it closed in 1991, including asbestos, heavy metals, PCBs and petroleum-based liquids, according to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.
While ownership of the site has changed multiple times, the town foreclosed on a majority of its lots on the peninsula in 2012, except for the privately-owned 8.3-acre parcel that Mason Station sits on.
Wiscasset has cleaned up most of what it can, according to Town Manager Dennis Simmons. Since 2018, it has received over $1 million in brownfields funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to help clean the ash ponds and other pollutants on the peninsula.
But efforts to clean up the former power plant have been slower going, in part because state officials had a hard time getting permission from its current owner, Mason Station LLC, to go in and do testing last year
Eventually, Maine DEP was able to get an administrative inspection warrant to do testing inside the Mason Station building last September, said agency spokesperson David Madore. The test results are slated to be published in March.
While the cleanup will likely be a huge undertaking, that hasn’t stopped another entity called Mason Station Redevelopment Co. from trying to take on the task. In August, that company began pursuing a plan to acquire Mason Station over the next three years, according to Ryan Gahagan, who is leading the effort.
First, the company is working to fully understand the scope of the contamination. Since Mason Station Redevelopment Co. is a private business, it’ll have to fund the cleanup and the removal of old equipment on its own.
“The piece that will take the most amount of time is the environmental,” Gahagan said.
Once that is complete, Gahagan hopes to redevelop the site with a marina on the Sheepscot River and other diverse tenants, such as manufacturers or developers of marine technology. While his plans are still being developed, he hopes the project would help expand access to the water for other marine industries such as fishing.
“Where working waterfront access is being taken away, it’s usually where there’s an existing working waterfront and a developer comes in and says ‘I want to build condos there.’ What’s unique is that’s not the case here,” Gahagan said. “That’s still crucial, we think, to offer. We want to make sure we’re expanding working waterfront access.”
In the future, Gahagan said the company would also be open to redeveloping the surrounding area with a mix of housing types if it can acquire the town-owned property. Gahagan said he’s been in conversation with the community of Wiscasset to help answer his questions and get feedback.
“I think the last thing Wiscasset wants is for another large single taxpayer, like Mason Station was or Maine Yankee was, where when it’s up and running and it’s operating, that’s awesome, but when it goes away, it’s a big problem for a town,” Gahagan said. “We have a lot of people that we still want to hear from. And it’s not just hearing from people, it’s engaging.”
