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The Town Line Community Newspaper, 575 Lakeview Drive, China, ME (2026)

06/01/2026

Dick Jerolmon’s history of the Vassalboro fire department

by Mary Grow

Dick Jerolmon’s May 24 talk on the history of the Riverside Hose Company and the Vassalboro Fire Department was partly a reunion.

Jerolmon named many people associated with the organizations from the 1960s on. His audience in the Vassalboro Historical Society meeting room included some of the men he identified, and more of their widows and children.

The focus was on the Riverside station in the southern part of Vassalboro. Jerolmon and, later, Bob Dore, son of former fire chief Jerry Dore, explained how, in the 1960s, Riverside residents became concerned about how far away they were from the fire station in North Vassalboro.

In those days, Dore reminded the audience, trucks were slower and roads worse than they are now.

Many Vassalboro men served as Augusta firefighters, Jerolmon said, both before and after the city rescinded its ban on non-resident department members. In 1963, the City of Augusta replaced an old fire truck, a 1937 Dodge with an open cab – and Riverside residents got it.

Its first home was a pole barn, offered by Paul Browne at his Maine Breeding Coop on Riverside Drive.

Not long afterwards, a farmer named Edgar Bailey donated a piece of land on the east side of Riverside Drive for a fire station. Jerolmon described Dick Jose, the Dores and others rounding up gravel trucks to haul enough gravel from Herbie Sargent’s old pit to create a level spot “big enough for a two-car garage.”

“I don’t know if Herbie Sargent ever knew about it,” Jerolmon commented.

Local residents built a two-bay fire station on the site, named the Bailey fire house in honor of the landowner.

Jerolmon still remembers taking the 1937 truck to one of his first fires, in a barn converted to a chicken-house off Quarrie Road. Freezing rain and sleet coated the windshield; the two men leaned their heads out on each side. They were guided by the sound of the tires on the roadside gravel: no sound meant too close to the mid-line, four noisy tires meant almost in the ditch.

Bob Dore said the civil defense agency donated a second truck. For some years, he added, the station had only one door, for lack of money for a second. Department members had to maneuver carefully to get both trucks in and out.

Later, Jerolmon said, Vassalboro sold the 1937 truck to Starks firefighters as their first truck, after demonstrating that it could sit on a bridge and pull water from the stream below.

The Riverside Hose Company remained a separate organization until 1980, when its members and North Vassalboro’s agreed on a combined board of directors. In deference to the older organization, Riverside’s head was a captain; the fire chief was in North Vassalboro.

Jerolmon and several audience members described Vassalboro’s early fire alarm system. It consisted of red phones in certain houses, including Jerolmons’, Dores’ and Howard and Simone Antworths’, three in the Riverside area and five in the North Vassalboro area.

A fire call would reach either or both groups of households. Whoever answered would take the information and start dialing the other numbers on the list of firefighters.

If the fire were a major one, the red-phone household members followed up by organizing coffee and refreshments – from the Dore house, fresh-baked blueberry muffins – at the fire stations.

Jerry Dore’s daughter Peggy commented that these connections made the people on her household list “just like family.”

Also part of the family, she said, were members of the Fishkill, New York, fire department. Jerolmon explained that his brother lived there, in a town with four stations and a policy of replacing equipment every 10 years.

Vassalboro people would drive to New York and come back with their vehicles loaded with ladders, generators and other items. Fishkill people came to Vassalboro and parked their campers in the Dores’ driveway, Peggy Dore said.

Until the 1980s, Jerolmon said, Riverside Hose Company got no town money. After an addition to the firehouse provided space, residents organized suppers and other fund-raisers, including the Labor Day fair, which gained national and even international fame.

George Gould wanted national sheepdog trials to be held in Vassalboro, Jerolmon said, but participants wouldn’t come so far east for one fair. Gould persuaded Blue Hill fair to hold trials, too – and two trials bought the nationals, with at least one participant from Scotland.

The frog-jumping contest was a fair event several people remembered. Peggy Dore won one year with a bullfrog; she said he “made it to the outside ring in three jumps and then he ate one of his competitors.”

Jerolmon said two enterprising young girls used to catch frogs in a nearby pond and sell them to would-be contestants.

Another shared memory was the clock on the Riverside station wall. Firefighters wanted a record of how fast they responded to a call, so they ran a string from the nearest fire truck to the clock’s electrical cord: when the truck moved, the string pulled the plug and stopped the clock.

Eventually, someone replaced the string with a stronger one. This string pulled the cord – and pulled the clock off the wall. It was dragged to the fire and back.

Bob Duplessie, son of North Vassalboro chief Norman Duplessie (who served from 1963 to 1978, according to the 2019 town report Jerolmon distributed copies of) talked about the North Vassalboro department. Its first two successive fire stations were on Oak Grove Road beside Outlet Stream.

American Woolen Company, with its large mill on Main Street, was a supporter of the fire department, Duplessie said. In 1947, the company provided an air horn to be used as a fire signal.

The town was divided into numbered districts, and the air horn blasted out the number. A button on each red phone activated it; if, for example, the fire was in district 18, a householder would press the button once, pause, and press it eight more times.

The horn also signaled the 9 p.m. curfew. Duplessie got to use it when he turned 15; he joined the fire department at 16.

Multiple participants in the discussion commended Vassalboro firefighters and their supporters for their willingness to donate their time and service, and to face the risks of fire-fighting.

Scott Antworth, Howard and Simone’s son, remembered when he was about six years ago “visiting [my] dad in the hospital – again – after he’d been pulled out of a burning building.”

The firefighters were “invested in their community,” he said, adding, “typical of Vassalboro.”

05/31/2026

Up and Down the Kennebec Valley: Agriculture & organizations

by Mary Grow

Windsor: seven first farmers

Last week’s article about Windsor’s early settlers and their farms mentioned four families. In alphabetical order, they were the Dockindorffs (also spelled Docken- and the last syllable doff or dorf); the Grovers; the LeBallisters (also spelled Le Ballister, Labalister); and the Linns (or Lynns).

Readers will note that the following paragraphs say little about what these settlers did in Windsor. The assumption is that they were farmers; there is some supporting evidence. A few men held town offices. Beyond that, information is sadly lacking, and what is available is often contradictory.

Four Dockendorff brothers from Bristol became Windsor landowners around 1800, Linwood Lowden said in his town history. His research found that Thomas, John and Jacob bought land in 1798 and 1799. John, Lowden said, settled in China; he could find no evidence that Jacob or Thomas ever lived in Windsor.

The fourth brother, Walter, was the only one listed in the 1800 census; Lowden said he had settled part of Thomas’s lot. An 1803 partial plan of the town reproduced in the book shows Thomas and Walter Dockendorff jointly owning 100 acres.

In his Kennebec County history, Henry Kingsbury called Walter “[p]robably the first settler in this region,” arriving around 1790. His land, Kingsbury said, was “about a mile west of Windsor Corner.”

(Windsor Corner, also called Windsor Corners and Windsor Four Corners, is the intersection of Route 32 [also Ridge Road] and Route 105 near the middle of town.)

Lowden described each of the later ownership changes of this lot, starting with the brothers selling half of it in 1812. His reason for the detailed recounting: when he wrote his history in 1993, a house on Route 105 “about a quarter mile west of Windsor Corner” was believed to be Walter Dockendorff’s house from around 1800.

On-line sources say Walter Dockendorff was one of either 10 or 14 children of Jacob and Margaret (or Marguerite) MacFarlane (or McFarland) Dockendorff. He was born either in August 1777 (a date that agrees with his gravestone inscription in Windsor’s Resthaven Cemetery) or an undetermined month in 1779, in either Bristol or Bremen.

Walter married Eunice Emma Groton, born in 1778, in 1797, in Waldoboro.

Current Windsor was incorporated as Malta on March 3, 1809. Kingsbury listed Walter Dockindoff as one of the two selectmen elected in 1809; he served for five years.

Walter Dockendorff was a corporal in the local regiment raised during the War of 1812, Lowden said.

FamilySearch, spelling the name Dockendorf except for the last two children, who are Dockendorff, lists Walter and Eunice’s “at least seven sons and six daughters” born between 1798 and 1830.

Walter and Eunice’s gravestone in Resthaven Cemetery says Walter died April 6, 1848, aged 70 years and 8 months; Eunice died May 14, 1853, aged 75 years and 3 months.

Find a Grave lists three of their children buried in Resthaven Cemetery: Sarah Jane Dockendorff Murray, 1806 – 1862; Walter, Jr., born Feb. 25, 1808, and died in September, 1823, aged 15 years, 8 months; and Lucretia, born in 1814 and died in October, 1823, aged 8 years, 11 months. (Your writer found no information about an epidemic in Windsor in the fall of 1823.)

Ancestry.com says in 1840, Maine was home to two of the three Dockendorff families in the United States. “This was about 67% of all the recorded Dockendorff’s in USA. Maine had the highest population of Dockendorff families in 1840.”

An on-line genealogy says one of the Maine families was in Windsor, headed by Walter, aged between 60 and 70. There was also a Robert, living in Hallowell and aged between 20 and 30.

* * * * * *

Ebenezer Grover, Lowden believed, deserves more attention than he usually gets in the history of Windsor. Grover was born in 1724 in York; he and Martha Grant, of Berwick, got married on August 15, 1745.

Lowden thought Ebenezer and Martha had three sons, William, Thomas and Stephen, and four daughters, Jane, Susannah, Elizabeth and Lydia. FamilySearch names four sons and three daughters.

An on-line genealogy of the Grover family (focused on Ebenezer’s grandson’s move to Canada) says Ebenezer “founded Windsor, Me.” It also confirms that Ebenezer and Martha had a son named Stephen; it says he was born in 1796 and “apparently” was in or near Restigouche, in Québec Province, Canada, by 1810.

Ebenezer and family lived in Georgetown and Whitefield. Lowden deduced that Martha died before 1785, because “she did not sign off her dower rights when Ebenezer sold the Grover homestead in Whitefield.”

Lowden found records showing that Grover was in Windsor by 1793. He built a small house on the west branch of the Sheepscot River, on the north side of contemporary Route 17, in southeastern Windsor – perhaps the first house built in the town.

On May 4, 1798, Grover sold 170 acres with the house to Thomas LeBallister. He was not listed in the 1800 census, perhaps, Lowden surmised, because he was living with his son-in-law, Elizabeth’s husband Joseph Trask, Jr.

Lowden said Ebenezer Grover could neither read nor write. Nevertheless, he became a land speculator. In 1797, he and three other men (including his son, Thomas) hired surveyor Josiah Jones to survey and lot out more than 6,000 acres, which the foursome divided among themselves.

“Almost all of the earliest settlers in Windsor bought land from Grover’s Plan,” Lowden said. Some of the initial buyers moved onto their land; others were speculators who bought, redivided and resold tracts.

The area was named Pinhook by its early residents, because of the sharp bends in the Sheepscot. After about 1800, Pinhook gradually became Waterford or New Waterford, Lowden said because the Kennebec Proprietors’ agent, a man named Richard Meagher, “is believed to have come from Waterford County, Ireland.”

Meagher had moved to New Waterford by late November, 1800, Lowden wrote, settling on land he bought from Ebenezer and Thomas Grover.

Grover and associates had no legal right to the lots they sold. As the Kennebec Proprietors began to enforce their rights, conflicting land claims between settlers who bought from Grover, directly or indirectly, and the Proprietors became a destructive part of Windsor’s – and the area’s – history in the early 1800s.

Lowden wrote that Grover “died in poverty.”

* * * * * *

On May 4, 1798, Thomas LeBallister, another Bristol resident, “bought 170 acres from Ebenezer Grover,” for $500, according to Lowden. In 1806, he bought another 160 acres.

LeBallister was listed as a Bristol resident on Jan. 1, 1800, so Lowden guessed he moved to Windsor that spring, before the 1800 census was taken. Lowden thought LeBallister moved into Grover’s house.

Kingsbury said LeBallister found squatters on his land, “the most notable of whom was a man named Grover.”

Later, Lowden said, LeBallister built another house at the current intersection of Route 17 and Griffin Road, an intersection first called LeBallister Corner and later Hall’s Corner. (And still designated Halls Corner on contemporary google maps, which show Griffin Road in south central Windsor, running north from Route 17 to Maxcy’s Mill Road.)

Kingsbury added details obtained from LeBallister’s son Joseph, who in 1892 was still living “on the home place.” He said LeBallister built a log cabin in 1793 succeeded by a nearby “frame dwelling” about 1803. “The chimney was laid with the first bricks manufactured in Windsor.”

This house burned in 1818, Kingsbury said.

Find a Grave says Thomas LeBallister’s father was a Revolutionary War veteran named Charles Le Ballister (1749 – April 4, 1816). Charles and his wife Hannah (1752 – March 5, 1822) are buried in Resthaven Cemetery.

Thomas seems to have been Charles and Hannah’s only child. His birth date is estimated at 1775. He, too, married a woman named Hannah; FamilySearch identifies her as Hannah Keene, born in 1775, and says they married in Bristol in 1795.

Find a Grave lists three children, Nancy, born in 1796 and died in 1797, and two sons, Thomas P. (1799-1844) and Joseph (1812 – 1893). FamilySearch adds another four sons (including William, born in 1809) and four daughters born between 1797 and 1816.

FamilySearch lists William’s six children by his two wives. His second son, born in 1837 to Emaline (Heath) LeBallister, whom he married Oct. 23, 1833, in Whitefield, Massachusetts, was named Americas Discoverer LeBallister.

Kingsbury mentioned the earliest tavern in Windsor as being opened by Thomas LeBallister about 1835. Probably the operator was Thomas P., who would have been about 36, rather than his 60-year-old father.

Thomas LeBallister died Dec. 16, 1845; his widow died May 13, 1855.

Find a Grave lists eleven LeBallisters in Resthaven Cemetery: Charles and Hannah; Thomas and his Hannah; Thomas P. and his wife, Betsy (1813 – May 2, 1838); and Joseph, his wife Sylvia C. (1811 – April 15, 1883) and their daughter Nancy A. (1837 – April 19, 1864).

The other two graves are those of Emeline Heath LeBallister (1808 – 1842), William’s first wife, and Mary Northey (1818 or 1819 – 1863), his second wife.

Find a Grave says William LeBallister died in 1864 (not 1867 as listed on FamilySearch) in the San Franciso Bay area of California.

* * * * * *

Kingsbury wrote that John Lynn was a Revolutionary soldier, born in August, 1754, in Boston. WikiTree adds that he was a private in Capt. John Granger’s company of Colonel Ebenezer Learned’s regiment (Worcester County, Massachusetts) in 1775; he collected a pension until his death.

Find a Grave and FamilySearch say Linn/Lynn married Rebecca Anderson on May 13, 1779, in Shelburn Falls, in northwestern Massachusetts.

Lowden wrote that in 1801, the couple and their 10 children, some almost adults, “sailed from Boston to Bristol [where Linn’s sister, Polly, and her husband lived] and walked most of the way from Bristol to Windsor.”

Kingsbury said they came to Windsor with their 11 children about 1803. Find a Grave lists eight sons and two daughters, born in Colrain, Massachusetts, between 1781 and 1800. FamilySearch gives names and birthdates of eight sons and four daughters, born between 1779 and 1800.

Kingsbury wrote that John Lynn’s sons, Nathaniel, James and John, “all settled between Lynn Hill and Windsor Corner.”

(Lynn Hill is frequently mentioned in histories, but does not appear on modern maps. In another paragraph, Kingsbury refers to a cemetery on Twenty Rod Road, which runs northwest off Route 32 well north of Windsor Corner as “near Lynn hill.”)

According to Kingsbury, John Lynn, Jr., was a selectman for five years, beginning in 1812, town clerk in 1812 and 1814 and treasurer in 1813. (Kingsbury’s lists do not make it clear whether Lynn held two posts simultaneously, or interrupted his time on the selectboard to fill the other offices.)

Buried in Windsor’s Resthaven Cemetery under the spelling Linn are John and his wife Rebecca, or “Babra” (Sept. 3, 1759 – Dec. 20, 1834); their son Joseph Linn (Nov. 21, 1784 – Oct. 3, 1846); a mysterious Nancy who died in 1822 (Find a Grave says one of John and Rebecca’s daughters was named Nancy, born in 1791, but she married a Jewell, bore him at least one son and died in 1871); a Samuel Linn who died in 1855, aged 27; and three more of a younger generation.

In the same cemetery, indexed under Lynn, are two more of John and Rebecca’s sons, Captain John Lynn (Aug. 29, 1781 – Aug. 29, 1864) and his wife, Ada A. (1806 – Nov. 14, 1865) and Cyrus Lynn (Oct. 25, 1795 – March 22, 1870) and his wife, Susannah A. (Smith) Lynn (April 22, 1800 – March 11, 1892); and four members of the next generation.

John and Rebecca Lynn both died in 1834, John on April 28.

In 1807, John Linn wrote a letter about his property deed in which he used the phrase that is the title of Lowden’s book.

Main sources

Kingsbury, Henry D., ed. Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892)
Lowden, Linwood H., good Land & fine Contrey but Poor roads a history of Windsor, Maine (1993)

Websites, miscellaneous.

05/31/2026

EVENTS: Audition Alert

Recycled Shakespeare Company is excited to present our first ever 10-Minute Play Festival! RSC is teaming up with ACAT to put on a series of plays! 12 original scripts have been selected and we need people who want to act! Please join us at the Fairfield house of pizza on June 10 from 6-8 or on June 13 from 10-12. There will be excerpts from plays to cold read. You will have the opportunity to act in one or multiple plays. Come see what we are all about.

RSC is a 501C3 nonprofit Unified theater company that provides royalty free productions to the public. We accept people from all walks of life - all ages, genders, and abilities.

ACAT is volunteer-run nonprofit community theater group serving central Maine, at their home, The Playhouse At Waterville Station.

FMI, see below

05/31/2026

OPINIONS: Clarification on proposed harvesting of aquatic vegetation on Webber Pond

We are writing on behalf of V-Town Aquatic Solutions to formally request that The Town Line publish an official Editor’s Correction regarding a factual error contained in your recent article concerning the proposed mechanical harvesting pilot program on Webber Pond.

The article states that aquatic vegetation would be cut and left in the lake to be removed later through the annual fall drawdown. This statement is factually incorrect and does not reflect the harvesting method proposed by V-Town Aquatic Solutions.

Mechanical harvesting involves the immediate collection of cut aquatic vegetation by conveyor onto the harvesting vessel. The biomass is then transported to shore, weighed, documented, and physically removed from the watershed. The harvested material is not left in the lake. The removal of aquatic biomass is the central purpose of the harvesting process and is the mechanism by which nutrients, including phosphorus, are exported from the aquatic ecosystem.

Because the article incorrectly describes the harvesting process, readers are left with the mistaken impression that no nutrient removal occurs. This misunderstanding directly affects public perception of the proposal and the scientific discussion surrounding it.

To be clear, this correction request is not a challenge to the opinions expressed by any individual quoted in the article. The article correctly reports that Dr. Mary Schwanke believes mechanical harvesting would have little impact on phosphorus concentrations in Webber Pond. Nick Jose and I respectfully disagree with that conclusion. However, reasonable people can disagree regarding the effectiveness of a management tool.

Our concern is not with differing scientific opinions. Our concern is with the inaccurate description of the harvesting method itself.

We therefore respectfully request that The Town Line publish an official Editor’s Correction clarifying that the proposed harvesting process includes the immediate collection, weighing, transport, and removal of aquatic biomass from Webber Pond, rather than leaving cut vegetation in the lake for later removal through drawdown.

We also believe there is a broader story deserving of public attention. Over the past six months, V-Town Aquatic Solutions has diligently worked through the process requested by state and federal agencies. We have consulted with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Maine Submerged Lands, the Division of Marine Resources, the Webber Pond Association, and numerous other stakeholders. Various agencies have either issued statements of no jurisdiction, no adverse effect, no action required, or otherwise indicated no objection to continuing through the permitting process.

At this stage, we are not requesting permission to conduct harvesting. We are seeking the opportunity to continue pursuing a scientifically monitored pilot program so that real-world data can be collected and evaluated. The purpose of a pilot project is to determine what works, what does not work, and what measurable impacts may result.

We appreciate The Town Line’s role in informing the public and respectfully request that the factual record regarding the proposed harvesting method be corrected.

Respectfully,

William Waldron
V-Town Aquatic Solutions
Nick Jose
President, V-Town Aquatic Solutions
Vice President, Webber Pond Association

05/30/2026

COMMUNITY GARDEN: A Big thank you

All of us at the China Community Gardens send out a huge “Thank You” to C**t Ryan, above, who not only masterminded the remedy for fixing our garden fence posts that had fallen this winter, but then went on to spend the better part of his weekend doing the hard work. Thank you also to Colby Glidden and Jeffrey, who helped. I know that people passing by are so happy to see them finally upright and sturdy. You did an amazing, professional job and we are grateful.

Carol Thibodeau
co-chairman China Community Gardens

PHOTO: C**t Ryan standing at the China Community Garden.

05/30/2026

Two China youths presented with Spirit of America award

At the May 18 China select board meeting, chairman Brent Chesley, center, presented the town’s Youth Spirit of America awards to Spencer Stephenson, left, and Finn Henderson, sixth-graders at China Middle School.

When another student and family ran into difficulties, Stephenson and Henderson organized fund-raising. The award recognizes their compassion in reaching out to someone in need and cites the example they set for others.

PHOTO: Select board chairman Brent Chesley, center, presented the town’s Youth Spirit of America awards to Spencer Stephenson, left, and Finn Henderson, sixth-graders at China Middle School.

05/29/2026

A newly reorganized lakes alliance for the eastern side of the Kennebec River

by Mary Schwanke

At a meeting of the Board of Directors on May 6, the former China Region Lakes Alliance (CRLA), a collaboration among the Webber Pond Association, Three Mile Pond Association and China Lake Association, was renamed the Kennebec Valley Lakes Alliance (KVLA) and expanded to now include the Three Cornered Pond Community Lake Association and Worromontogus Lake Association, commonly known as Togus Pond Association. Future board membership is expected to include, at a minimum, representation from the five lake associations, along with representatives from the Kennebec Water District, the towns of Vassalboro and China, and the city of Augusta.

The reorganized and expanded alliance administers the shared Courtesy Boat Inspection (CBI) program, the region’s single most important means of preventing the spread of aquatic invasive species. KVLA also provides the benefits of shared expertise, experience, educational programs, workshops, LakeSmart assistance to landowners, and more leverage in obtaining grant support for lake restoration and protection. These benefits will come back to the towns as we prepare for a decade of remediation and protection of Webber, Three Mile and Three Cornered ponds, and continued restoration of China Lake and Togus Pond. The water quality of our lakes affects everyone, from property values to alewife harvests to recreational uses by residents and seasonal visitors alike.

Courtesy boat inspections are free, voluntary checks conducted at our public boat launches focused on preventing the spread of invasive aquatic plants like Eurasian Water Milfoil, Variable Leaf Milfoil and Water Chestnut. These weeds multiply rapidly and can quickly overrun native species, destroying wildlife habitats and ruining recreational uses of the lake.

The KVLA program, with support from the Kennebec Water District, the local towns, the lake associations and a grant from the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), has hired Nate Quirion as the new CBI Coordinator who will oversee a team of 15-20 trained inspectors this season. In addition to checking boat hulls, propellers and trailers for plant material and invasive species, these inspections focus on educating boaters to self-inspect and to clean, drain, and dry their equipment.

The CBI program is Maine’s primary prevention effort against the spread of aquatic invasive species and has been highly effective in maintaining the health of the state’s waters. While Maine has over 2,700 lakes larger than 10 acres, less than 1 percent of these are currently infested with these invasive weeds. However, central Maine is the most endangered part of the state.

Based on the 2026 “Invasive Aquatic Plants in Maine Waters” map and lists, there are at least nine water bodies in Kennebec County with confirmed infestations. Variable Leaf Milfoil, Curly Leaf Pondweed and other invasives have been found west of the Kennebec River, including the nearby Belgrade Lakes. The 7 Lakes Alliance annual costs for remediation efforts now exceed $400,000.

Locally the number of boats inspected through our CBI program has risen dramatically. In 2024, there were 1,439 inspections, with plant fragments found in 111 instances but no invasive plants. Last summer, 3,209 boats were inspected; 556 or 17 percent had plant materials attached, but again none of these was an invasive species. Bass clubs are also a critical partner, conducting mandatory inspections as a permit condition. Fortunately for China, Vassalboro, Windsor, Augusta and the surrounding towns, the lakes and ponds in our region east of the Kennebec remain free from these invasive aquatic weeds. With continued vigilance we can hopefully keep it that way.

05/29/2026

Longtime China town employee retires after 30 years

by Mary Grow

The China town office parking lot was full for several hours Friday afternoon, May 15, and passersby wondering why needed only to look at the illuminated sign out front.

The sign alternated between wishing Kelly Grotton a happy retirement and inviting everyone to her retirement party in the town office meeting room.

Dozens of people accepted the invitation.

The room was decorated with a large “Happy Retirement” banner, photos and other mementos, including a replica of Grotton’s 718 KG license plate. Long tables held flowers and other gifts, and locally made refreshments. Most of the time there were enough chairs to go around.

Grotton, wearing a sash that said “The Queen Has Retired” and a tiara, greeted well-wishers with wide smiles and warm hugs. Guests followed her example; there was much hugging and much cheerful conversation.

Town Manager Rebecca Hapgood opened the proceedings by reading the proclamation select board members unanimously approved at their April 21 meeting, thanking and praising Grotton for her service.

As of April, Grotton had worked 30 years for the town. Her current title is assistant to the assessors’ agent, but, like all of China’s employees, she has taken on other jobs when needed.

05/28/2026

Town manager: Municipal WasteHub recycling facility in Hampden is progressing

by Mary Grow

China Transfer Station Committee members met for an hour the morning of May 12, with a familiar agenda (see the April 23 issue of The Town Line, p. 3, for an earlier discussion).

The main news, shared by Town Manager Rebecca Hapgood, was that the planned Municipal WasteHub recycling facility in Hampden is progressing. Hapgood said managers started operating it a week ago, and run times have gone up from an hour for the first try to, recently, a five-hour run that ended only because the shift ended.

Hapgood expects runs to last for an entire shift “very soon.” Products sorted for recycling include cardboard, paper, plastic and metal. Managers are very good about sending weekly updates, she said.

China is one of 115 Maine municipalities with Municipal Wastehub memberships. City and town officials have been waiting years for a new facility to open.

On the local scene, Transfer Station Manager Thomas Maraggio repeated his recommendation to increase the fee charged to commercial haulers bringing trash to the China facility, from the current three cents a pound to four cents immediately, and eventually to the seven cents a pound Maraggio estimates would cover costs.

For comparison, Maraggio said several transfer stations that do not have scales charge $100 a load. He calculates China’s three cents a pound would equal less than half that.

Hapgood put Maraggio’s request on the select board’s May 18 agenda. Select board members voted unanimously to raise the fee to five cents a pound effective July 1, as what Thomas Rumpf called “a warning” to haulers that more changes might come.

They plan renewed discussion in October, looking to a Jan. 1, 2027, change that might be another fee increase or a ban. Maraggio said the three commercial haulers currently coming in could take their loads to Waterville or to Norridgewock.

Committee members again discussed whether transfer station staff should be allowed to load compost into residents’ trailers. They reached no conclusion.

Maraggio reported he is still waiting for the Department of Environmental Protection to send someone to evaluate China’s brush disposal area. DEP is dissatisfied with the lack of protection under the brush; committee members have discussed a paved area as the best solution.

Hapgood said she was meeting with an engineer the morning after the committee meeting to discuss options for changing drainage around the recycling facility, an ongoing problem.

She also shared new state guidance on ash disposal. Small quantities, if they are fully cooled, the state allows to be bagged in plastic and put in the hopper, not in demolition debris or compost.

Maraggio stressed the importance of “fully cooled,” citing instances of fires started by still-hot ashes.

China needs to change its solid waste ordinance if town officials choose to accept the state’s guidance, Hapgood said. The ordinance now lists ash as a special waste, and lists special waste as not acceptable in the municipal waste hopper.

Maraggio proposed considering a public address system at the hopper, so that staff monitoring it could remind people not to toss in items that don’t belong there.

He emphasized the need to recycle clear plastic containers, like containers for milk, dish-washing liquid and windshield washer fluid, not treat them as trash. They’re among the most valuable recyclables, currently bringing the town $1,700 per ton.

Committee members scheduled their next meeting for 9 a.m., Tuesday, July 14, skipping June (when the regular meeting date was June 9, election day).

The Town Line Community Newspaper

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