HARTLAND, Maine — On a sunny day here in late August, Judy Pease surveyed the parking lot behind a former building at the now-defunct tannery where she worked for nearly 30 years.
“They called the area ‘blue haven’ because the hides came in blue from chromium treatment,” she said. “The hides used to sit out on pallets and fill the parking lot.”
After a 20-minute walk down an ATV trail and beyond the “no trespassing” signs off of the path, Judy and her husband Rod Pease quickly located piles of contaminated blue hides buried in the woods. Judy said the chromium on the hides used to irritate her skin and nostrils. They were long buried all over town, according to the couple and another resident.
To take on costly messes at abandoned and hazardous industrial sites throughout the state, the Legislature in 2022 established a land bank. In January, the bank purchased its first property, the former Tasman Tannery, which contains asbestos and harmful chemicals. The blue hides are an example of the kind of unwanted surprise that can emerge near a former industrial site.
The bank plans to clean up, then tear down the old buildings and find a developer to transform the property into a multi-use campus along the river flowing through the downtown. After the tannery went bankrupt, small businesses left, too, leaving Hartland without even a gas station.
“Nothing was going to happen to the tannery site by a private developer or the town because it had too many legal, title and environmental issues for any one entity or developer to take on,” Gabe Gauvin, program manager for the Maine Redevelopment Land Bank Authority, said. “We exist to find these stuck properties and try to unlock their potential.”
Maine has at least 330 other contaminated former manufacturing sites known as brownfields, nearly half of them in rural areas like Hartland, which is about an hour north of Augusta, according to a University of Maine study.
The old tannery’s contamination is extensive. The seven buildings on the 27-acre property contain asbestos, lead paint, PCBs and other hazardous materials that need to be abated, Gauvin said, citing a recent environmental study. The bank plans to start the clean-up over the next year before demolishing the decrepit buildings.
It isn’t clear who owns the forested land where the blue hide waste was found, but Gauvin said the bank will clean it up if it turns out to be on its land. The study also identified other buried hides and broken barrels behind one of the tannery buildings on Main Street.
It could cost around $4 million to clean the buildings alone. The bank applied for a federal brownfield grant, but it was denied because of the high number of other applications, Gauvin said. It was encouraged to reapply, but in the meantime is seeking funding from other sources.
Harold Buker, a Hartland resident who worked at the tannery under several owners for 42 years, is excited about plans to rejuvenate the downtown, but he doubts the replacement will be an economic engine on the scale of the tannery.
“It’s a crying shame that space isn’t being used,” said Buker, whose tannery jobs included work as a supervisor and safety director. “But it will take more than mom-and-pop shops. People need [a bigger business] to get work.”
Working at the tannery could be hard, wet and dangerous, but Buker has a lot of good memories. He still makes his wife laugh when he speaks about his days driving a forklift and sorting hides.
Before most leather manufacturing moved offshore to Asia in the early 1990s, some 550 people worked three shifts around the clock at the tannery. Over the years, its customers included the shoe manufacturer New Balance, the Maine apparel company Origin and the military. The tannery blamed shifting consumer preferences during the pandemic for its demise.
When the original owners, Irving Tanning Co. of Massachusetts, ran the company, they paid for additions to the library, sponsored athletic programs and paid for the Irving Tanning Community Center, Town Manager Chris Littlefield said. The tannery’s relationship with the town was more strained under Tasman’s five-year stretch, mainly related to taxes and fees for wastewater management. But Tasman paid what it owed before it left, Littlefield said.
Jen Connell, manager of Wright’s General Store in Hartland, recalled the bustling activity at the former stores that fed off of the tannery’s workers. She is hopeful about the property’s future. Her grandmother worked at the tannery for more than 30 years.
“I’d like to see something go in there that will provide jobs and more money for the town,” she said. “It’s a nice property, right on the river.”
Even after the clean-up, some residents are skeptical a developer will be drawn to Hartland, a town of 1,600 people with little to offer. Today, its only major businesses are a landfill and a pollution control facility, noted longtime resident George Greenwood. But Gauvin remains optimistic.
“This site abuts the Sebasticook River and has been privately owned for a very long time,” he said, saying that recent meetings with town residents have focused on housing, economic development and outdoor recreation. “The community has not had access to their waterfront, so we want to return that and create some public and green space.”
Lori Valigra reports on the environment for the BDN’s Maine Focus investigative team. Email her at lvaligra@bangordailynews.com. Support for this reporting is provided by the Unity Foundation, a fund at the Maine Community Foundation and donations by BDN readers.
