The Eastland Woolen Mill site is located on the East Branch Sebasticook River within the Kennebec River basin. This mill produced woolen fabrics from the mid-1930s to 1996 and used chloroben- zene in the dyeing process. Before 1971, the mill discharged wastewater directly to the East Branch Sebasticook River. Soils, groundwater, and river sediments are contaminated with chlorobenzene compounds and trace elements at concentrations that exceed screening guidelines. There are several impassable dams in the Kennebec and Sebasticook River basins, but a program to restore anadromous fish access to the watershed is now underway. New fish passageways at the dams are expected to allow fish access to the site by 2002. A consumption advisory is in effect on the East Branch Sebasticook River due to PCB and dioxin contamination.
Eastland Woolen Mill Corinna, Maine EPA Facility ID: MED980915474 Basin: Lower Kennebec HUC: 01030003 Executive Summary
The age of mills and factories and industrial scale farming took its toll. Eastland Woolen Mill was the worst of it.From the earliest years of the 20th century tanneries, woolen mills, shoes, and furniture mills came and went all along the river until by mid century they began close one by one. Today the Harmony yarn mill and the Tannery in Hartland are still operating but their practices have changed. There have been dozens of large commercial mills on the Sebasticook in the last two centuries. Woolens, tanning, shoes, all have been manufactured, dyed and spun here. Some dams just exist to generate electricity or hold water for drinking or other purposes. At the same time commercial waste was dumped into the river and streams. Even today the dumping from the cannery and tannery on Sandy Stream at the beginning of the Twentieth Century contributes to the pollution in Unity Pond. The Sebasticook has had mill towns up and down the river for three hundred years and the river was the dumping ground for many. Corinna”s Eastland Woolen Mill was closed and declared a Superfund site in 1996. Couple that with dairy, sheep and potato farms that have lined the banks of the river, its lakes and tributaries, and there has been a significant point and non point pollution in the Sebasticook. For many years it was classified as impaired on all fronts.
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