March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

PERC, communities negotiate

Facing a 31-day deadline, talks between the Penobscot Energy Recovery Co. and its customer communities started on the right foot, officials say.

The parent company of the incinerator in Orrington and the Committee to Analyze PERC traded copies of proposed contracts recently. Tuesday about 10 officials from each side met for the first round of negotiations.

“We’ve exchanged proposals, and the two were pretty far apart. That was to be expected,” said Donald Meagher, representative of CAP and administrator of the Penobscot Valley Refuse Disposal District.

“To some extent, they may not have realized what was important to us,” Meagher said. “They’ll have a revised proposal to us by the end of the week. And we’ll discuss it next week.”

Last year, the partnership behind PERC announced that the plant, and its sister facility in southern Maine, announced that the plants were in financial straits. They asked PERC customers to come up with an increase of $19 a ton for the trash disposed at the incinerator while talks for a long-term contract were under way.

Under the interim contract the cost of disposing trash at PERC ranges from $29 a ton for some municipalities to $45 for others.

The interim contract expires Sept. 30.

Floyd Gent, the vice president of operations at PERC’s partner, KTI, spent the day in meetings and failed to return telephone calls Wednesday.

The talks Tuesday did not focus directly on tipping fees but on how risks will be allocated, Meagher said, which will be reflected in the tipping fees — the cost of trash disposal at the plant.

The industry standard is that the company running the plant assume any financial risks associated with its operations, and that the clients assume any risks that are beyond the operator’s control.

The risks beyond the control of the operator include such things as inflation, changes in the law and increases in the cost of residue disposal.

“The disposal cost for ash and (front-end process residue) are going to be the big variable and the predominate responsibility lies with us,” said John Frawley, city engineer for Bangor and chairman of CAP.

“And we’re going to suggest that the state share in the cost of disposing of the ash at some point,” he said. “They created the space shortage.”

Wednesday, the action shifted to the south with a meeting between officials of the Maine Energy Recovery Co. and the Tri-County Solid Waste Advisory Corp.

And, according to an observor, the two sides spent the day hammering out the final details of the long-term agreement.


Have feedback? Want to know more? Send us ideas for follow-up stories.

comments for this post are closed

You may also like