Landfill opponents file suit against BEP

ALTON – An attorney for We the People, a group of area residents opposed to the West Old Town Landfill deal, has filed a lawsuit at Penobscot Superior Court against the state Board of Environmental Protection.

We the People’s attorney Marcia Cleveland of Brunswick is asking the court to overturn the BEP’s Oct. 21 decision denying the organization’s appeal to stop the landfill project.

In addition, the complaint asks the court to define the state’s application to increase the landfill’s height and accept additional waste streams at the site as an expansion rather than an amendment to the already existing permit to accept mill sludge at the site.

Classifying the project as an expansion would require the state to hold a formal public hearing and the applicant would have to provide full siting criteria required by Maine’s solid waste laws to prove that the site is suitable to accept the desired waste streams.

“That’s all you really can ask for in this kind of an appeal,” Cleveland said Tuesday in a telephone interview.

The particular suit Cleveland filed Nov. 22 is called an 80-C petition, which is a special action for appealing the decision of a state agency.

We the People organizers anticipate they will need to raise another $10,000 to $15,000 to help pay for experts and legal fees surrounding their appeal to the court, group members said Tuesday.

The three-way landfill deal in Old Town among the state, Georgia-Pacific Corp. and Casella Waste Systems was designed to keep the city’s paper mill open while addressing the state’s waste disposal problem.

The state bought the site from G-P for $26 million and chose Casella, which runs the Pine Tree Landfill in Hampden, to operate it. The project was approved by the Department of Environmental Protection April 9, and We the People’s appeals have been unsuccessful thus far.

The group has been fighting the deal for nearly a year and held a press conference Tuesday, in conjunction with the Toxics Action Center of Portland, to present the West Old Town Landfill with a 2004 Dirty Dozen Award. Twelve such awards are given to 12 of New England’s top polluters.

“This is a list nobody wants to be on,” Will Everitt, the center’s field director, said Tuesday.

A Portland-based nonprofit environmental and public health organization, the center has been helping We the People gain information on the landfill project, as well as assisting it in contacting experts and developing fund-raising ideas.

Two unidentified men using a Penobscot Nation municipal truck, later identified by its license plate number as being registered to Penobscot Nation Air Quality, attended the press conference. Both declined to say why they attended the event or what their interest in the landfill project or We the People was, saying only that they weren’t from the media and that they were there to get more information and learn about the issue.

Attempts to reach Penobscot Nation representatives Tuesday afternoon were unsuccessful.

Penobscot Nation officials previously have stated that they are against the landfill and have been denied any input in the project.

Appeals to the BEP by We the People and Orono resident Paul Schroeder regarding the DEP’s April 9 approval of the project were denied in October.

Before filing suit in Penobscot County Superior Court, Schroeder and a group of concerned area residents submitted stacks of documents to the Consumer Protection Division of the Maine Attorney General’s Office regarding the project.

The documents “tell a story that questions the legality of the process,” We the People member Debbie Gibbs said Tuesday.

The record includes memos, e-mails and faxes between state and local officials, as well as representatives of G-P and Casella from March 3, 2003, through the Oct. 21, 2004, BEP hearing on the appeals.

The Attorney General’s Office has not yet responded to the complaint, according to Cleveland.

As for the court process, BEP officials have to assemble what they consider to be the record and file it with court. The court then will notify Cleveland and give her a date by which she must file her brief. All involved agencies, including the State Planning Office, the BEP and the Attorney General’s Office will then have a chance to reply.

Cleveland didn’t know when the case might reach a judge.

“This is a huge record, and it really depends on whether the agency can organize it and present it to the court in the 40 days they have,” she said. “I think it’s probably going to take awhile.”