Proposed fees aimed at industrial polluters

PORTLAND — The state’s largest industries, such as paper mills, may have to pay up to $200,000 annually in licensing fees under a proposal targeting companies that pollute the air and water.

The Department of Environmental Protection’s bureaus of air and water quality control hope to raise more than $1 million each by raising fees for air- and water-pollution permits.

Ronald Kreisman, chief lawyer for the Natural Resources Council of Maine, said he is reserving judgment on the bill until he learns more about it, but he praised the concept.

Paper industry officials said they want to know more about the proposal before they decide whether to go along with it.

“I don’t know of any mill that is saying, `I can’t wait to pay $200,000 more,’ ” said Floyd Rutherford, executive director of the Paper Industry Information Office. “We just want to ask some key questions before we can decide.”

Rutherford had reservations about the fees and said they would be the highest nationwide in the paper industry.

The new system for licensing polluters annually would charge fees for pollution permits, while the current system levies charges when licenses are renewed every five years.

Water-pollution fees would cost the state’s 13 largest pulp and paper mills up to $100,000 annually. Air-pollution fees also would range up to $100,000. About seven of the mills and Central Maine Power Co. pollute enough to pay the maximum.

Rutherford said he hoped the new fees would help speed up the licensing process, which industry officials have criticized as being too slow.

Air Bureau Director Dennis Keschl said the new fees would provide extra staff to process applications, but said that all delays wouldn’t be eliminated.

The air quality bureau has been praised for its enforcement activities, which generated fines of nearly $2 million last year. But Keschl said the fines are evidence that the bureau lacks the money needed to enforce the law effectively.

Most of the fines involved violations during the first half of the 1980s. “We have been playing catch-up,” Keschl said.

Keschl said the minimum fee for an air-pollution license would be $100 a year, which would authorize the discharge of 50 tons of waste. For larger polluters, they would be charged $2 a ton for the first 1,000 tons of air pollutants. To emit between 1,000 tons a year and 4,000 tons, the company would have to pay $4 a ton. Emissions of more than 4,000 tons would cost $8 a ton.

Water bureau fees would be based on a formula involving the volume and type of waste and into what rivers they are discharged.

Acting Water Bureau Director John Moulton said the higher fees would “take the cost of controlling water pollution away from the general taxpayer.”