FARMINGTON – SAD 9 directors voted Tuesday to readmit a Mt. Blue High School student who was expelled last year. Directors also voted to increase the limit on a loan for its share of the cleanup of an abandoned waste oil site.
The student who was readmitted had been expelled, Assistant Superintendent Sue Pratt said, for violating the district’s drug and alcohol policy by distributing drugs.
The board determined in executive session that the student would not violate the policy again, and that the student has been receiving counseling and will continue to receive counseling, Pratt said.
High school Principal Greg Potter recommended that the student be readmitted, she said.
In other action, directors voted unanimously to authorize Superintendent Mike Cormier to sign an amendment to the financing commitment of the Plymouth Waste Oil Clean Up Loan Program on behalf of the directors, Pratt said.
The amendment increases the loan by $18,694.28 to a total of $51,006.53, under the same conditions cited in the original loan agreement.
The state Department of Environmental Protection recommended the increase in the loan, Pratt said.
A multitude of Maine municipalities, schools and other agencies, along with businesses that hired a disposal company years ago to dispose of waste oil, mainly motor oil, are having to pay their share for waste oil cleanup at an abandoned waste-oil site.
Between 1965 and 1980, George West operated a waste oil disposal business, Portland-Bangor Waste Oil Co. in Plymouth, but later went out of business and abandoned the site along with a few others in the state.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began cleaning up the abandoned Hows Corner site in Plymouth in the 1990s after contamination was found in a residential well. The site was declared a Superfund site by the federal government.
Federal law requires contributors to share in the cost of cleanup if a business that caused the pollution cannot fund the cleanup.
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