By Ryan Michaels | The Maine Mirror | September 30, 2026

Imagine turning on the water in your own home and noticing something is wrong.

An unfamiliar smell. Laundry coming out discolored. Questions about something you have always depended on.

For residents of East Gray, those warning signs became part of a documented environmental crisis. Records from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, the federal agency responsible for implementing environmental laws, describe reports of odors in well water and discolored laundry as early as 1973. By 1977, contamination from the nearby McKin waste site had reached local private wells.

I came across McKin while researching former Maine legislator and Secretary of State Bill Diamond’s public career. The records brought me to a story that deserves attention on its own: a waste business, contaminated drinking water, a community response, and a cleanup whose consequences extended across generations.

There are technical terms in this history, but you should not need a background in environmental science to understand what happened.

We can work through it together, starting with the people who lived there.

What was McKin?

The McKin Company operated a waste collection, storage, transfer, and disposal facility on roughly seven acres along Mayall Road in Gray.

EPA’s 1985 Record of Decision, the document explaining its selected cleanup plan, identifies Richard A. Dingwell as the company’s owner and says he purchased the property in 1963. The agency describes the company’s operations there from 1965 to 1978.

The facility handled petroleum wastes and industrial chemical wastes. Its equipment included 22 aboveground storage tanks, an asphalt-lined lagoon, a basin used to hold liquid waste, and an incinerator, equipment used to burn waste.

EPA documented practices that included discharging waste onto the ground, storing it, burning it, transporting it elsewhere, and burying it onsite.

That history helps explain why the cleanup eventually had to address both contaminated soil and groundwater.

Groundwater is water beneath the surface, in spaces and cracks within soil and rock. Private wells draw from that underground supply. When chemicals reach it, contamination can travel beyond the place where waste was deposited.

The warning signs reached people’s homes

According to EPA’s historical account, a November 1977 assessment indicated that contaminants from McKin had reached many local private wells.

In December, the Town of Gray issued a cleanup order. Sixteen private water-supply wells were capped, closing them off, and emergency water was brought in by truck.

Affected homes were connected to public water in August 1978. EPA records say that work was supported by a $300,000 federal Imminent Threat Grant, emergency financial assistance, and matching town funds.

Connecting homes to a different water supply addressed an immediate need. The contamination beneath the community still required a response.

For me, that is the human center of this story. A government record may describe an emergency water supply in a sentence. For a household, it changes the ordinary routines that make a home feel secure.

What is Superfund, and why did McKin qualify?

Superfund is the federal program for investigating and cleaning up sites contaminated by hazardous substances. Its authority comes from a law Congress passed in 1980.

The program allows EPA to require responsible parties to perform cleanup work or repay government cleanup costs. When there is no viable responsible party, it gives EPA funding and authority to undertake cleanup.

A Superfund site is a place being addressed through that program. It is not a type of business.

McKin was added to the National Priorities List on September 8, 1983. This is EPA’s formal list of sites identified for priority attention under the program, including long-term investigation and cleanup. McKin’s addition placed it within that process.

But work had already begun. EPA’s site profile says Maine removed approximately 33,500 gallons of waste and 165 drums of oils and chemicals in 1979.

Removing stored waste, treating contaminated soil, and addressing polluted groundwater became different parts of a much longer effort.

Where Bill Diamond appears in the record

Maine’s legislative records document a McKin cleanup funding proposal in 1983: L.D. 1419, followed by a new draft, L.D. 1750.

L.D. means Legislative Document, the numbered designation used to identify a proposed bill. A bill is a proposal for legislation; its introduction does not mean it became law.

During Senate proceedings on June 23, 1983, lawmakers considered returning L.D. 1750 to the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the group of legislators assigned to examine proposals in those subject areas.

Senator Diamond explained that preserving the bill would provide a way to make money available if promised cleanup funding did not arrive. He described the purpose as “to protect the citizens of Gray.”

The Senate recommitted the bill, meaning it sent the proposal back to the committee for further consideration. That step did not, by itself, make the funding proposal law.

This establishes Diamond’s participation in the legislative response. His statement describes an effort to protect residents and keep a funding option available.

(Close-up of the black-and-white McKin group photograph reproduced in EPA’s 1987 in Review. The original caption identifies, from left to right, Paul G. Keough, George Mitchell, Dean Marriott, Robert Dillenback, Cathy Hinds, and Bill Diamond. Source: U.S. EPA, Region 1, printed page 24.)

The photograph with George Mitchell

EPA’s New England report, 1987 in Review, includes a photograph at McKin identifying:

• EPA Deputy Regional Administrator Paul G. Keough
• U.S. Senator George Mitchell
• Dean Marriott, commissioner of the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, or DEP, the state environmental agency
• State Senator Robert Dillenback
• Citizen activist Cathy Hinds
• Former senator Bill Diamond

The photograph appears in a section about state and federal partnership.

It documents Diamond and Mitchell together at McKin alongside environmental officials and a citizen activist. The caption alone does not establish the precise date, their conversations, or a broader private relationship.

Cathy Hinds’s inclusion also matters. The historical record gives a citizen activist a place alongside the officials involved in the response.

(Full screenshot of printed page 24 of EPA’s 1987 in Review, headed “A State and Federal Partnership,” showing the McKin group photograph, identifying caption, and discussion of government cooperation. The lower photographs depict the Charles River in Cambridge and Hyannis Harbor in Massachusetts.)

Cooperation did not eliminate disagreements

The next page discusses tensions between EPA and state governments and EPA’s role as an enforcement backup: federal action can help when a state has difficulty getting a polluter to follow environmental requirements.

Its examples concern broader New England issues, including Boston Harbor. This passage does not establish a dispute at McKin. It explains the wider government relationship discussed beside the photograph.

That context helps us read the image within the report that published it.

(Screenshot of printed page 25 of EPA’s 1987 in Review, continuing the state and federal partnership section. Beneath a photograph captioned “Vermont Farm,” the text discusses cooperation, disagreements, and EPA’s enforcement role across New England. The farm photograph does not depict McKin.)

Why the cleanup lasted so long

EPA reports that soil cleanup began in July 1986 and finished in June 1987. Approximately 12,000 cubic yards of soil were treated using thermal soil aeration: heating and aerating soil to remove certain contaminants.

Groundwater was harder to address. A system completed in September 1990 pumped contaminated water out of the ground for treatment.

In 2001, EPA changed the plan after finding that pumping and treatment could not practicably restore the groundwater to the required standards.

The revised approach used long-term monitoring and institutional controls, legal restrictions designed to prevent exposure to remaining contamination.

At McKin, those included a Gray ordinance prohibiting groundwater use in a designated area, restrictions attached to properties, and conservation easements, agreements limiting certain uses of land.

Cleanup can protect people while contamination still requires controls.

Understanding the decades-long timeline requires examining the decisions and technical findings at each stage.

What removal from the Superfund list meant

EPA reports that McKin was removed from the National Priorities List in 2022 after the agency and Maine determined that the appropriate cleanup responses had been implemented.

Monitoring, repeated checks on site conditions, and five-year reviews continued. A five-year review evaluates whether the cleanup measures still protect people and the environment. EPA completed McKin’s seventh such review in July 2023.

Restrictions remained necessary, and EPA explicitly states that removal from the list does not prevent future Superfund action if warranted.

Removal from the list therefore marked completion of the required cleanup response, with continuing responsibilities. It did not mean every trace of contamination was gone or that groundwater could be used without restrictions.

Why revisit this history?

Because understanding our communities includes understanding what happened beneath them.

McKin provides a documented starting point for examining waste disposal, public warnings, government decisions, and the work of residents and officials.

My continuing research will examine the original legislative proposals, funding decisions, company and cleanup records, and the context of the EPA photograph. Those records can help explain who did what, when, and with what result.

The people whose wells were contaminated deserve to remain at the center of that work.

References

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. What Is Superfund?

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. EPA Proposes to Remove Former McKin Company Site In Gray, Maine From Superfund List. March 22, 2022.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Superfund Record of Decision: McKin Site, ME. 1985. See “Site History.”

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. McKin Co.: Cleanup Activities.

Maine Legislature. History and Final Disposition, 111th Legislature, First Regular Session, 1983. See McKin site entries for L.D. 1419 and L.D. 1750.

Maine Legislature. Legislative Record—Senate, June 23, 1983. Printed pages 1441–1442.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 1. 1987 in Review. McKin cleanup section and “A State and Federal Partnership,” printed pages 24–25. All three supplied images reproduce material from this report.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. McKin Co.: Stay Updated, Get Involved. Site deletion, monitoring, and institutional controls.