Landfill is a safe and needed answer

The Municipal Review Committee (MRC) knows the solid waste business. We represent more than 160 Maine communities that deliver trash to the PERC combustion facility in Orrington and are very familiar with the day-to-day complexities of managing trash collected from homes and businesses in the cities and towns we serve. While some suggest responsible solid waste management has been lost on the public consciousness, be assured that MRC has worked hard over the past 12 years to ensure that our trash is managed in an environmentally sound manner that serves the public interest.

The MRC supports the West Old Town Landfill project as an important part of the solid waste management system that manages waste from all of our communities. The MRC board of directors recently sent a letter to the commissioner of the Maine DEP urging timely final approval of the West Old Town Landfill project.

As proposed, the landfill would accept the residuals from the PERC facility on a long-term basis and be operated in accordance with the DEP’s strict modern standards. Thus, the project would support the long-term viability of the PERC facility for recovering energy from solid waste and greatly reducing the volume of waste requiring disposal while improving recycling opportunities of glass, paper and construction and demolition debris. These elements, implemented together, offer the potential for significant improvement of the existing systems for managing waste in central and eastern Maine.

The project has undergone extensive review, not only in the current proceeding before the DEP, but also during the extensive permitting process that preceded the original construction of the landfill in the mid-1990s. As a regional facility owned by the state, the landfill’s environmental compliance record will be under intense scrutiny. We are confident that these measures provide sufficient protection of the public interest.

We also wish to set the record straight regarding two issues that are directly in our area of responsibility – the nature of combustion ash, and the rationale for accepting out-of-state waste at the PERC facility.

Opponents of the West Old Town Landfill project have claimed that combustion ash is toxic and hazardous without offering any definition of what those words mean. Combustion ash is a special waste that requires special handling under applicable Maine laws and regulations. It is tested regularly to confirm that it does not meet the definition of hazardous waste under federal and state law. After the ash is proven not to be hazardous, it is disposed of safely in lined landfills such as the Pine Tree Landfill in Hampden. The West Old Town Landfill would also be capable of accepting the combustion ash safely by virtue of its design and other protective measures required by the Maine DEP.

The opponents also decry the disposal of out-of-state waste at the West Old Town Landfill, as well as “conversion” of out-of-state to in-state waste at the PERC facility. The DEP’s draft order on the West Old Town project clearly prohibits the acceptance of solid waste generated from out-of-state sources. While the PERC facility accepts limited amounts out-of-state waste, Maine communities and businesses reserve all of the facility’s capacity for first use. Out-of-waste is not accepted unless the reserved capacity is not fully used and unless there is a direct benefit of such acceptance to PERC and the region’s municipalities. In fact, PERC’s acceptance of out-of-state waste helps the facility to operate more efficiently during the winter and other periods of low waste generation. From an economic standpoint, out-of-state waste generates more than $500,000 per year to help prevent increases in disposal costs for Maine communities and their property taxpayers.

The argument about “conversion” of out-of-state to in-state waste is without merit. PERC converts the majority of accepted solid waste into valuable fuel. Residual wastes generated at the PERC facility as a result of this do not qualify as out-of-state wastes any more than do the peels of oranges eaten in Maine and grown out-of-state.

While the MRC support for the project is based primarily on its environmental soundness and need, the economics benefits are also considerable. In addition to the direct impacts for preserving jobs and the local economy the project would provide an affordable outlet for residuals disposal that could not be easily replaced. If the West Old Town Project does not go forward the PERC facility would need to find another landfill to accept its residuals by 2006. The additional cost could be in the range of $2,200,000 per year in new property taxes or user fees.

We believe these benefits are compelling. The project is consistent with Maine’s reduce, reuse, recycle, incinerate and landfill waste management hierarchy. It will comply with stringent standards for environmental protection and will provide considerable economic benefits to the MRC communities and to the region as a whole. For these reasons, the MRC board of directors has supported and will continue to support the timely and final approval of the West Old Town landfill project.

Larry Folsom of Brownville, president of the MRC board of directors, wrote this commentary on behalf of the board.