Task force offers ideas for trash management

loading...

Among a list of statute and regulatory changes, the state’s Solid Waste Task Force is recommending that the state monitor more closely waste generation and disposal capacity in Maine, according to a draft report issued late last month by the State Planning Office on the task force’s findings.

The Solid Waste Management Policy Review Task Force 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.

“I think it was a chance for us to hear what the issues were, and we didn’t try to reach consensus,” George MacDonald of the State Planning Office said Friday.

A draft of the group’s ideas and suggestions has been compiled by the State Planning Office and will be presented to the Legislature’s Natural Resources Committee for consideration, as well as to the governor and the Department of Environmental Protection. The information will be used to update the state’s five-year plan on solid waste management.

“The only thing in there that surprised me a little bit is the recommendation that we go to a very long-range planning horizon, which isn’t a bad thing,” Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner David Littell said Friday. The DEP is responsible for implementing the state statutes, and Littell took part in the task force.

“It’s not a bad thing to do, but that’s a long time to look at,” Littell said, noting that it’s difficult to have answers to potential situations that far in advance.

“But it might help you to start thinking what the answer might be,” he said.

The task force is recommending that the state’s needs and capacity for managing waste cover a 25-year horizon. The group is also seeking an assessment of the impact of recycling on disposal capacity.

The draft report is more than 60 pages long and outlines 14 changes that the task force developed during the three times it met last year.

The group’s recommendations include affirming what the state already is doing, while others deal with policy suggestions, research and data collection recommendations and proposed programmatic changes.

“We need to develop a better message that waste is actually a resource,” MacDonald said. “We need to look at waste reduction, reuse, recycling and composting: Where does solid waste fit into our energy policy?”

The title of the report is “Recommendations for Moving Maine Beyond 50% Recycling,” and MacDonald said that is one main focus.

Based on the State Planning Office’s calculation, which includes construction and demolition debris, Maine recycles 35 percent of its municipal waste. The United States Environmental Protection Agency excludes demolition debris from its calculation, which shows that the state recycles 49 percent of its waste.

But MacDonald said Friday it’s not the numbers that are important.

“Let’s not get hung up on [whether] it’s a 35 or 37; let’s focus on doing a better job and then get out there and count the numbers later,” he said.

The task force also noted several changes that have occurred in the state which make it necessary to revisit Maine’s current solid waste policy framework.

Some of the changes observed by the task force included the growing amount of waste generated in state; a growing public awareness of environmental impacts; an increase in imported solid waste; and the fact that many public programs have maximized participation in recycling.

Littell said he made a suggestion at the last meeting that the state’s recycling statutes be more rigid.

“I made the comment that we’d like to see more teeth in the recycling statute,” he said.

The state’s acquisition of the Juniper Ridge Landfill in Old Town, formerly the West Old Town Landfill, was a major change that the task force noticed.

Old Town City Manager Peggy Daigle, who participated in the task force, stressed several times that the issue of host community agreements needs to be reviewed and clarified.

“We were put in a difficult position after the state purchased the West Old Town Landfill [Juniper Ridge Landfill],” Daigle said Friday.

“This landfill is the first state-owned landfill and many of the laws relating to landfills do not anticipate the state being the owner with a commercial operator at the helm,” Daigle wrote in a January letter to members of the Natural Resources Committee, explaining the process the city had gone through.

“Many of the existing statutory provisions, including the host community benefits … arguably did not apply to us.”The task force recommended that a statutory change be made to develop a protocol for negotiating and reviewing community benefit agreements.

Community benefits are afforded to towns who play host to landfills. Old Town previously struggled with developing its benefits agreement with landfill operator Casella Waste Systems Inc. in part because there was no protocol to follow because Juniper Ridge is the first state-owned landfill in Maine.

A 1989 regulation bans all new commercial landfills and requires that the state own the facility.

“The laws right now that are on the books don’t anticipate the state being the owner,” Daigle said. “The laws won’t apply to [future host communities] unless they amend the laws to deal with the state being the owner.”

Based on the recommendations made by Littell, Daigle, and the other task force members, the State Planning Office now will finalize the draft report and forward it to the state’s Natural Resources Committee for their consideration.

The draft report can be accessed at www.recyclemaine.com/policy/report.pdf.