BANGOR DAILY NEWS • December 16, 2021
There are at least 39 old tires abandoned in or near a streambed behind the former Denny’s restaurant in Ellsworth that, according to state law, are not supposed to be there — and they’ve gone largely unnoticed, perhaps for decades. The presence of the discarded tires, which could be causing an environmental hazard by slowly releasing microplastics into the surrounding environment, shows that despite decades of efforts to clean up the Union River watershed, problems remain. Since the mid-1990s, the state has been working to reduce or remove the largest uncontrolled tire stockpiles in the state, which typically have contained multiple thousands of old tires. But sites like the one behind Denny’s are often too small for the DEP, which doesn’t have the time or resources to respond to every complaint.