BANGOR DAILY NEWS • August 19, 2022
The city of Bangor is still working to clean up a contaminated part of the Penobscot River more than 50 years after the closure of a gas plant that polluted it with coal tar. Bangor has been under a state consent decree since April 2007 to clean up a part of the Penobscot River that is contaminated with large amounts of coal tar deposits. It’s one of several ongoing federal and state efforts to rehabilitate the Penobscot River along the Bangor waterfront. Bangor Gas Works operated a manufactured gas plant from 1850 to 1963 on Main Street, and dumped coal tar, which is a byproduct of gas manufacturing, into that part of the river, where some of it hardened into sediment.