Shaun Farrar

Sep 26, 2025

The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Acadia Psychiatry.

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BAR HARBOR—On May 9, 2025, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection conducted a routine solid waste facility site assessment of Bar Harbor’s waste and recycling facilities both at the White Spruce Road transfer station and the Hulls Cove location.

According to Deputy Commissioner Maine Department of Environmental Protection David R. Madore, “The transfer station is generally in good operating condition; however, there were several recommendations for operational improvement.”

Most of these improvement recommendations were minor and easily rectified, such as signage, labeling, and record keeping issues. Some included better separation of items such as white goods containing freon and E-waste.

According to Recycle Smart, “‘White goods,’ more commonly described as ‘large appliances,’ are things like washers, dryers, air conditioners, refrigerators, ovens, dishwashers – basically any machine that uses electricity or fuel to cool or heat air or water and isn’t easily portable.”

However, one issue that was noted by the inspection team earned a “needs to be addressed immediately” recommendation.

This issue has to do with leachate from the municipal solid waste that leaks from the trailers that are used to hold and transport the waste.

“Leachate is a by-product derived from municipal solid wastes due to their physical, chemical, and biological changes and will be formed in landfills, incineration plants, composting plants, and transfer stations,” Zhao Youcai writes in 2018, Pollution Control Technology for Leachate from Municipal Solid Waste.

Paint, human and pet waste, pesticides, automotive care products, detergents, pharmaceuticals, medical waste, and many more hazardous materials all have the potential to end up in the municipal solid waste (MSW) stream. Many of them are not supposed to be placed there but often are due to negligence, lack of knowledge, or lack of caring.

When those products are thrown into the bin at the Bar Harbor transfer facility, they get compacted within the trailer that they will eventually be transported in for space efficiency and this compaction squeezes the waste, potentially causing contents to escape their containers, and melding these substances together. Many of these substances are liquids.

These trailers have two layers of rear doors. When the trailer is backed into the bay of the transfer station to receive waste, the inner door stays closed. The outer door is opened to allow the compacting ram access to the trailer. This allows the compaction mechanism to move into the trailer and compact the waste. When the trailer is full, the compacting unit stays extended within the trailer to keep the contents fully compacted while the trailer is pulled forward and off of the compacting ram. The outer door is then closed.

The transfer station staff perform the switching out of full and empty trailers. The full trailers sit outside of the bay doors as pictured below until a contracted company comes to retrieve them and take them to the facility where the waste is disposed of.

Unfortunately, these trailers which are designed for heavy duty use, do not have watertight doors and leachate runs from the rear of the trailer onto the ground. Within the transfer station bay, there is a trench that was purposefully built to collect and contain this leachate. When the trailers are pulled out of the bay, there is no such system and leachate leaks out while the trailers are waiting to be picked up and taken to the MSW facility.

What the DEP inspectors discovered is that just outside of the bay door and a few yards to the south is a stormwater drain. Due to the slope of the paved area, the leachate has a natural tendency to flow toward and into this stormwater drain. Also, during a rainstorm, any accumulated or dried leachate will be washed into this stormwater drain.

Stormwater drains flow into lakes, streams, rivers, and/or the ocean.

An email inquiry to Bar Harbor Town Manager James Smith and Public Works Director Bethany Leavitt garnered a response from Smith who said he believes the issue goes back to the original site design and layout and that the town is “exploring possible solutions.”

“The DEP did not issue a letter of warning or notice of violation,” wrote Madore, nor was the issue “deemed significant enough to warrant formal enforcement action by DEP.”

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DEP ASSESSMENT REPORT

Medep Bar Harbor Ts Inspection Report

2.59MB ∙ PDF file

Download

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