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WINSLOW

Portion of slope ends up in river

By Scott Monroe smonroe@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer

WINSLOW  — A huge chunk of land missing from a steep embankment. Mature trees that used to stand there now sticking up in the middle of the river. Fears of whether there is more to come.

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DAMAGE INSPECTION: Officials with NextEra Energy Resources, the company that owned the former Fort Halifax Dam, inspect a landslide they discovered Wednesday on a steep slope overlooking the Sebasticook River in Winslow. A cemetery off Halifax Street is on top of the slope.

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That was the result Wednesday afternoon after officials discovered a landslide at the rear of a cemetery that overlooks the Sebasticook River.

Officials don’t know when the landslide occurred, and said no one was injured. The location is sandwiched between the former Fort Halifax Dam and the Dallaire Street slope, where six homes were demolished last week following long-standing concerns about the ground’s stability.

Several local and state officials were on land across the river Wednesday afternoon, inspecting the scene.

They didn’t know much yet.

“I’m sure having all this rain was a contributing factor to the soil being so loaded down with water,” Richard Beausoleil, director the Maine

Emergency Management Agency, said as he surveyed the slope. “It just gave way. I’ve never seen a landslide like this. At least no one was injured and no one was fishing on the bank.”

Beausoleil said his agency had contacted the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, who would likely dispatch officials to investigate.

Fire Chief David LaFountain, who was on scene with police officers, said the area is known locally as Cemetery Hill. The cemetery itself didn’t appear to be affected by the landslide, although officials said they didn’t know whether further sliding would happen.

Also on scene Wednesday were officials from NextEra Energy Resources, the company formerly known as Florida Power & Light

Energy, which owned the dam. Mike Pelletier, an engineer with NextEra Energy, said his company discovered the landslide about noon on Wednesday during a regular inspection of the area and notified the town government.

Pelletier said no one knows when the landslide occurred. He, too, said that heavy rain in recent days were likely a factor.

“Even if the dam were still here and there were normal water levels, this would have happened,” Pelletier said. “This is a steep slope with fill on top of clay.”

Winslow police officers and town public works employees had taped off the rear portion of the cemetery “to keep people off the slope,” Town Manager Michael Heavener said.

“People shouldn’t go into the back side of that cemetery,” Heavener said. The edge of the slope “looked like about 30 feet from the cemetery fence.”

And the closest gravesites were about 10 feet from the fence.

Heavener said he planned to meet later with Police Chief Jeffrey Fenlason and Fire Chief LaFountain to discuss what officials know so far and “where we go from here.” Heavener said he was “surprised” when he was informed of the landslide.

“I would describe it as a substantial landslide,” he said.

The discovery comes about a week after a $725,000 project was completed to remove six homes on a nearby slope on Dallaire Street.

The town purchased the Dallaire Street homes — with the aid of a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency — so the residents could move elsewhere, out of concern that the riverside slope the homes were on was not stable.

The Dallaire Street slope has been labeled unstable by geo-technical consultants since at least 1976; the houses were built on top of waste from an old mill. Its instability seemed to accelerate last summer, months before the residents were evacuated.

Critics of the summer 2008 removal of the Fort Halifax Dam have pointed to the dam’s removal as a contributing factor of the Dallaire Street instability, but there have been no studies making such a connection.

Scott Monroe — 861-9253

smonroe@centralmaine.com