OLD TOWN – Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Dawn Gallagher has not made a decision as to whether she will grant residents a formal public hearing regarding the proposed West Old Town Landfill.

Gallagher was not in her office Thursday, but the message was relayed by her secretary that “[Gallagher] has not made a decision yet.”

The state is in the process of purchasing the West Old Town Landfill for $25 million from Georgia-Pacific Corp. as part of what G-P and state officials are calling the “cornerstone of strategic initiatives focused on enhancing the future viability of the Old Town mill.”

The state has chosen Vermont-based Casella Waste Systems, the only bidder on the project, as the landfill’s operator. The state will act as the site’s owner, but it is illegal for it to operate the facility.

Concerned residents grilled officials connected to the landfill project until midnight Wednesday at a State Planning Board-sponsored public meeting at the Old Town Elks Club.

The purchase and sale agreement for the proposed landfill between G-P and the state was signed Nov. 20, but the Department of Environmental Protection must approve the amendment application before the sale can be completed. That decision is expected to come in mid-February.

Residents feel this date is too soon for the DEP to investigate thoroughly possible problems with the existing landfill, as well as the impact the project will have on Old Town and surrounding communities.

“I think that if nothing else … they’re going to have to take and listen to us, and they’re going to have to have a formal hearing,” Alton resident Debbie Gibbs said Thursday. “We raised a lot of public concern.”

That was the goal of Gibbs and We The People, a group of residents opposed to the landfill who are seeking more information on the topic.

Formal public hearings are held when the DEP determines there is credible conflicting information and a public hearing is necessary to help them make their final decision, DEP project manager Cyndi Darling said Thursday.

The deadline for requesting a public hearing on the landfill was Dec. 11, 2003, and although the DEP had several requests in before the deadline, no hearing has been scheduled. The city of Brewer discovered Tuesday that its request for a public hearing had been denied, but only after officials had contacted the DEP themselves.

“I was very pleased that that many people came out,” Darling said of Wednesday night’s meeting. “I was somewhat disappointed that the people didn’t want to listen to what the project was about.”

Residents weren’t interested in the presentations made by involved parties, such as Georgia-Pacific and Casella; instead, they wanted answers to their specific questions.

“Ultimately, most of the 300 or so people there walked away disappointed,” Maggie Drummond of the Toxics Action Center in Portland said Thursday.

“The meeting last night should have been for the people to get their questions answered, and it shouldn’t have been a place for Casella to advertise their business,” she said. The Toxics Action Center is a nonprofit organization that is set up to help residents in Maine who are facing some sort of toxic threat within their communities.

“We have worked very hard at being very thoughtful of the issues you might have,” Casella’s president, Jim Bohlig, said at Wednesday’s meeting. He assured residents that the landfill would accept only in-state waste, would work to reduce sludge odor, and that Casella would be taking 100 percent responsibility for everything associated with the landfill – including any already existing contamination.

Bohlig’s comments didn’t comfort residents who feel the landfill is a “short-term, near-sighted solution to the problem,” Steve Warren of Old Town said Wednesday.

Some residents who spoke said that the jobs that reportedly would be saved at Georgia-Pacific may not be worth the long-term impact of the landfill.

The DEP is continuing its review of the amendment application and expects to have a decision by mid-February.

Residents who were told by the DEP project manager that this was “not a done deal” are not giving up and plan to continue their efforts to get a formal public hearing and possibly halt the project.