The Penobscot River is being polluted by the state owned, privately run Juniper Ridge Landfill. Landfill leachate is a waste by product created when rainwater filters down through layers of solid waste in a landfill, collecting a toxic cocktail of chemicals along the way. The leachate is then trucked to the Nine Dragon’s Paper mill wastewater treatment plant in Old Town, “processed” and dumped in the Penobscot River.
This video summarizes the most recent attempt by the state of Maine to formally put an end to the subsistence rights of the Penobscot Nation within the Penobscot River. To learn more and watch the full length documentary, visit SunlightMediaCollective.org.
This short film highlights the alarming territorial theft attempt faced today by the Penobscot Indian Nation. In December of 2015, a U.S. District Court Judge decided on the highly controversial and historic case, Penobscot Nation v Janet Mills, Attorney General for the State of Maine. The Judge re-affirmed the Tribe's treaty-reserved sustance fishing rights, but ruled in favor of the State of Maine’s opinion that the water of the Penobscot River, which flows through Penobscot Nation Tribal...
The Maine Board Of Environmental Protection (BEP) is currently considering changes to Maine's waste policy that would change the definition of Maine generated waste in order to control the disposal of out-of-state waste in Maine’s publicly-owned landfills, and require the consideration of environmental justice and equal protection when expanding or siting waste facilities in Maine.
Each year over 200,000 tons of out-of-state waste is disposed of at Juniper Ridge Landfill, a publicly owned, privately run landfill in Maine. The waste used to construct it is toxic enough to have been banned from disposal in all 5 other Northeastern states. An annual average 10 million gallons of leachate from Juniper Ridge Landfill is received by the Nine Dragons Paper Old Town Mill facility, which holds the discharge permit that allows for the release of landfill leachate into the...
THE PENOBSCOT: Ancestral River, Contested Territory traverses the landscape of deal-making and deal-breaking that has largely defined tribal-state relations in Maine. From the 1700's to the present-day, the film emphasizes the Penobscot people’s centuries-long tradition of environmental stewardship, and outlines the current legal battle, PENOBSCOT NATION v. MILLS, which is a move to preserve Penobscot territory and maintain the inherent, treaty-reserved sustenance fishing rights of the...
