The prospect of environmental cleanup at Mason Station is being be dusted off once more.

Wiscasset officials are eyeing regional and federal help in figuring out what needs to be done, just as the head of a regional planning panel envisions the property’s reuse in manufacturing.

Town Manager Marian Anderson said she and Town Planner Jamel Torres would be setting up a meeting with Lincoln County Regional Planning Commission staff. Funding is one issue, but so is the fact that the lot the former power plant sits on remains one of the few Mason Station properties the town has not taken for back taxes, Anderson said on Aug. 24.

Part of the reason for the talks will be to help figure out the direction or directions the town needs to go in to enable cleanup on a property it doesn’t own, she said.

The planning commission approached the town last winter about possible Wiscasset sites to assess after the commission won $400,000 in federal funds to assess brownfields, sites whose suspected contamination has left their future use in limbo. But at the time, Mason Station’s court appeal was pending as the company fought the town’s efforts to collect taxes. In May, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court rejected the appeal.

“Finally, we have that legal green light,” Anderson said Monday about the town’s ability to explore its options.

As the commission’s chairman, former Edgecomb selectman Stuart Smith said he has been working toward Mason Station being a place where people go to work again. The town of Wiscasset has been working toward Mason Station’s reuse for years, said Anderson, interviewed separately.

The former power plant has the potential to host manufacturing that provides jobs with good pay for area residents, if cleanup funding and other support align to attract a company that fits with the plant and other existing business, Smith said Aug. 19.

An employer coming in would also help Wiscasset recover from its tax loss that followed the plant's closure, he said; so, as the planning panel's chairman, he wants to help clear a path for that to happen.

Smith said he has talked with Gov. Paul LePage and an economic adviser to the governor about promoting development in Wiscasset.

Regarding Mason Station specifically, Smith said he has a company in mind: one of the partners just announced on a planned project with Peregrine Turbine Technologies (PTT) of Wiscasset.

That partner is Vacuum Process Engineering (VPEI), whose hot press can help produce the technology that PTT has been developing, Smith said. The plant's interior has the necessary overhead space for the press, and it would make sense to have production happening in the same town as the design work is going on, he said.

Smith said he has spoken with PTT’s co-founder David Stapp about the idea of VPEI coming into Mason Station.

Stapp said Aug. 20 that he has asked VPEI‘s president if he would consider moving the hot press to the state of Maine. “And he said he’s open to the discussion,” Stapp said.

In asking, Stapp said he didn’t bring up Mason Station or Wiscasset, just Maine. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a soft spot for Wiscasset,” as evidenced by starting a business here and his past chairmanship of the Wiscasset Area Chamber of Commerce, he said. But, just as he is not ruling out PTT leaving Wiscasset at some point, he said that, when it comes to something that could involve a partnering business, he also has to look at location from a business standpoint.

Other Maine communities have resources and infrastructure, without Mason Station’s issues, Stapp said.

A town document dated April 9, 2013 cites environmental issues at Mason Station. The document states, in part: “A significant amount of asbestos is still inside the building. To our knowledge no remediation plan was prepared for the building itself. Some asbestos has been removed ... in relation to removal of equipment.”

Between 2004 and 2008, environmental contractors studied an asbestos fill area at the property’s north end and made a remediation plan, according to the document; but neighbors’ lawsuit over plans for tree-cutting in connection with the work halted those plans in 2010, it states.

Prior studies of the site don’t negate the need for a new assessment’s first phase, which looks at adjacent property uses and various records that can change over time, said Mary Ellen Barnes, the regional planning commission’s executive director.

The federal funds have so far led to assessment work involving the former Fieldcrest nursing home and Best Felts, both in Waldoboro, and the harbor parking lot in Damariscotta, Barnes said Aug. 20.

Stapp called Smith’s idea for VPEI to set up shop at Mason Station “speculative.” But he said he and Smith share the goal of job creation.