BUCKSPORT — The Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) said Thursday that the amount of papermaking chemical spilled as the result of a train derailment last week is less than originally believed.

Initial estimates indicated that 4,000 to 6,000 gallons of a liquid latex product known as emulsified styrene butadiene copolymer had spilled into the Penobscot River when four cars went off the Pan Am Railway tracks Friday evening, May 25.

Those tank cars were part of a 32-car train headed for the Verso paper mill.

In an e-mail Thursday afternoon, DEP spokesman Samantha DePoy-Warren said department officials now believe somewhere between 100 and 1,000 gallons of the latex product spilled.

“Our estimates are always based on the available information we are provided by our partners and can gather from our review of the scene while also taking into account planning for the worst case scenario,” DePoy-Warren explained, “and are subject to be updated as new information becomes available.”

The two tank cars containing the liquid latex were fully offloaded Wednesday, DePoy-Warren said, with the contents being pumped up a steep embankment and into waiting empty rail cars.

Two other cars containing kaolin, a clay slurry also used in the papermaking process, are being offloaded Thursday and Friday. Some of that product has also spilled into the river, but DePoy-Warren said DEP has been unable to estimate a quantity.

The derailment occurred on a section of track where a steep embankment drops sharply toward the Penobscot River. At high tide, one of the cars is fully submerged, while another car is partially submerged and the end of a third car is also in the water.

“One of those cars is leaking a small amount of [kaolin] product when the tide washes in and the water around the cars continues to be visibly milky,” DePoy-Warren wrote. She said the material is “expected to disperse and dissolve over the course of the tide cycles.”

The plan for removing the derailed cars involves patching them and transporting three of them via the Penobscot River to Winterport, where a Pan Am crane will pull them out of the water, according to DePoy-Warren.

The fourth car, the one furthest from the water and closest to the tracks, will be lifted up the embankment and removed via rail.

DePoy Warren said DEP is continuing to monitor impacts to the environment but “have thus far observed no natural resource damages” such as dead fish or birds. Monitoring of the site will continue after the tank cars are removed, she said.

According to DePoy-Warren, DEP responders on scene have reported that the recovery process and the work between Pan Am, DEP and other groups has “gone as well as possible” considering the logistical challenges.

Among those, DePoy-Warren noted, are the “fast moving river, steep embankment, [and] large volumes of materials in potentially unstable overturned railcars.”

In addition to the tank cars themselves, the scene of the derailment is strewn with parts of those cars, such as sets of wheels, and broken trees and railroad ties.

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