ORLAND — In what has become a continuing saga, the license application that could help reopen the area’s primary sludge-disposal site was returned by mail to the site’s operators Tuesday.

The residents of 10 Hancock County towns have had to put sludge pumping on hold since the Department of Environmental Protection shut down the Lawrence Clement site on the Back Ridge Road in East Orland because it was using unlicensed concrete holding tanks.

Operators of the site hoped to store composting sewage in the tanks during the winter when it can’t be worked into the frozen fields.

Audrey Atwood said Tuesday that the fourth application she and her husband, Wilford Atwood Jr., have submitted to the DEP this year was returned asking for some minor information.

The Atwoods have operated the site since Audrey’s father, Lawrence Clement, died last year. Although the Atwoods say they mailed an engineered construction plan to the DEP as part of a license application last summer, DEP officials say they never received it, thus the Atwoods had technically been operating without a license before the closure.

Town officials have had to scramble to make other arrangements for their residents who need to dispose of their sewage. Residents who have not waited for the site’s reopening before pumping their tanks have had their sewage hauled further away, at a cost of as much as $50 more per tank.

For 17 years, the site has been used by the towns of Bucksport, Blue Hill, Castine, Orland, Verona, Penobscot, Brooklin, Brooksville, Sedgwick and Surry. Selectman Gordon Emerson of Blue Hill said Tuesday he hopes the Atwoods will receive a temporary operating permit while they await a license.

Audrey Atwood said the site receives 400,000 gallons of sewage per year.

The next nearest disposal site is outside Hancock County, in the town of Bradford north of Bangor, and transport contractors charge extra to haul longer distances.

Part of the DEP’s concern is the location of the site in the Toddy Pond watershed. The tanks must be secure to prevent pollutants from contaminating the pond.

Steve Page, an environmental specialist for the DEP, is on vacation, and was unavailable for comment this week on the status of the licensing procedure. But DEP officials reportedly said recently that a temporary license could be issued within 15 days of receiving an application.

“This is not as much a hardship for us as for the towns,” said Audrey Atwood. “They had to make other arrangements at the drop of a hat and were given very little notice.”