Rubbish and principle

The Brewer City Council expressed the frustration and anger of the entire region Tuesday night when it decisively rejected a request for a $19-per-ton increase in rubbish fees paid to the Penobscot Energy Recovery Company — the Orrington-based trash-to-energy plant that is awash in red ink. The Council took a dramatic stand, but it is not a position that would endure a two-week cycle of failure to pick up and dispose of Brewer’s municipal rubbish.

On Wednesday, the PERC incinerator continued to burn, as did the Council over the failures of the Department of Environmental Protection to respond adequately to the appeals of Maine’s communities, which are caught in a political compactor — crushed between state mandates to move from dumps to environmentally more benign methods of waste disposal, and the budget-draining economics of dealing with a incineration system that is going broke.

The Brewer Council was doing its job. Using votes to send messages to the powerful, in this case the DEP, and making speeches to express the collective pique of a community are part of what leadership and service is all about. There is no question that if a single cause could be found for all the solid-waste problems in eastern and northern Maine, the region would vote overwhelmingly to have the culprit pelletized and fed to the Orrington incinerator.

But, the lack of an identifiable villain is only part of what makes the PERC situation so difficult.

While Brewer was saying “No” this week to the near tripling in tipping fees at PERC ($9.85 a ton to $28.85), the Bangor City Council was approving an identical increase to cover the period beginning April 1 through the month of June. The Bangor Council did not want to pay more for city rubbish to be disposed of, but it realized it had little choice and agreed to a council order notifying commercial haulers of an impending, $19-per-ton increase.

The cost of trash disposal is going up. Brewer can’t stop it, for long, and neither can Bangor, which at the moment is faced with a very practical problem, how to get rid of 10,000 tons of municipal trash each year.

Brewer Councilor Marilyn Lavelle, the only member of her panel to vote in favor of the higher fees, found the bottom line for both communities when she advised Brewer to vote the increase and concentrate for the next three months on finding a solution to its solid-waste disposal problem. Brewer, said Councilwoman Lavelle, like every other U.S. city, is being forced to “bite the bullet” on solid waste.

The Brewer City Council is absolutely right. The DEP, at the urging of the Legislature, promulgated rule after order demanding that burning dumps close, landfills shut down and construction debris be given special treatment. The DEP, understandably, is an extremely negative agency in the judgement of municipalities. This is the view of state government generally.

That perception must be altered by the new Bureau of Solid Waste under Sherry Huber, which was established to meet state government’s obligation to become a positive force in locating new disposal sites and in helping communities find the expertise to cooperatively use the next generation of trash-disposal technology.

But towns and cities must acknowledge another historic fact: They have not done enough for themselves. The DEP has an infinite capacity to make their lives miserable, but municipalities saw the mountain of trash coming in plenty of time to react, but few of them were aggressive in effectively meeting the challenge, and almost none of them have an alternative now that PERC is on the ropes financially. The long-term solutions: per-bag charges or curbside recycling programs are expensive, inevitable, but aren’t ready to go.

Brewer and scores of other towns served by PERC can refuse to pay the higher fees, which are consistent with the findings in an independent financial study prepared at the request of PERC communities. PERC then can go bankrupt quickly, and the same communities, through property taxes or other public money, can buy the plant back and own and operate it regionally, like a huge trash-burning, waste-to-energy Bass Park full of bed springs and dead car batteries.

The best response is to pay the higher fees now, “bite the bullet” and use the next three months to follow Lavelle’s advice and consider realistic municipal options. There aren’t many of them, they are expensive and inconvenient, and there’s no point in hurrying them. They’ll be here soon enough.