City manager helps study waste policy

AUGUSTA – Having almost completed a host community agreement, Old Town City Manager Peggy Daigle had a lot to add to discussion Tuesday by the task force that has spent the last few months reviewing the state’s solid waste management policy.

Daigle is a member of The Solid Waste Management Policy Review Task Force, which includes about 40 individuals representing a cross-section of state and municipal officials, people in the waste management business and those interested in limiting the effect waste management has on residents and the environment.

The group’s ideas and suggestions will be compiled by the State Planning Office and presented to the Legislature’s Natural Resources Committee for consideration. The information also will be used to update the state’s five-year plan on solid waste management, and the task force looked ahead at establishing priorities for managing the state’s solid waste.

“I don’t see many major issues arising, but there are a number of nuances that need to be addressed,” said George MacDonald, director of waste management and recycling for the State Planning Office.

One such issue that was discussed Tuesday is the state statute dealing with host community agreements.

Task force members spent the majority of the day Tuesday working in groups of about 10 people, and during the morning work session they focused for more than an hour on host agreements.

Host agreements are created to provide the landfill’s host community with a benefits package to compensate for having a landfill located in the town. Benefit packages generally include things such as monetary compensation and reduced tipping fees for the town.

The current statute, however, deals only with commercial facilities and doesn’t mention state-owned operations such as the West Old Town Landfill, or municipally owned and commercially operated facilities, such as the proposed Lewiston operation now in the permitting process.

A change in the statute language is something that the Old Town city manager said she wanted to see. Although the impacts created by commercially or state-owned landfills are basically the same, the statute isn’t adequate as far as Daigle and other members of her group are concerned.

“It really didn’t guide us well,” Daigle said.

A host agreement between Old Town and the state’s chosen landfill operator, Casella Waste Systems Inc., recently was reached and the City Council is slated to vote Tuesday on the document.

The city and Casella spent more than a year negotiating an agreement, but Daigle disagreed with group members who said mediation or arbitration should be a mandatory part of the process if negotiations are delayed. She said it would have been an added expense to the parties that already had hired legal counsel experienced in landfills.

“I don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all policy on this,” Daigle said, noting that she’d also like to see broader criteria for provisions of the statute.

Now it is the job of the State Planning Office to take the issues and possible solutions determined by the task force and boil them down in a form that can be presented to the Legislature and Natural Resources Committee to potentially change some solid waste regulations.

The State Planning Office intends to have its report and recommendations ready in February when the task force will meet one more time to review and discuss the report.