As mountains of used newspapers mount as fast as public pressure to recycle it, two companies are considering building mills in Maine to reprocess newsprint.

Georgia-Pacific Corp. is applying for permits to build a $47 million de-inking mill in East Millinocket, and a Connecticut-based company is considering several sites, including one in Topsham, as a possible location for a 500-ton per day plant.

If the permits are approved for G-P’s project, mill executives will ask G-P’s board of directors to approve and fund it, G-P spokesman Gordon Manuel said.

The company would like to have the mill in operation by the end of 1992, but the timetable will depend on how long it takes the state to process the applications.

The company hopes the de-inking plant will strengthen its market share in the eastern United States as states consider laws requiring newspaper publishers to use newsprint containing recycled fiber.

G-P’s recently acquired East Millinocket mill has been under customer pressure to supply recycled newsprint, said Manuel.

The plant would make 250 tons a day of newsprint with 40 percent recycled fiber. The East Millinocket mill now produces some 340 tons of paper a day, most of it newsprint.

The Department of Environmental Protection received G-P’s site location application for a 60,000-square-foot de-inking mill on July 11, said the DEP’s Stacie Beyer, who expects processing to take six to eight months.

In Topsham, the Caithness-King Co. of Stamford, Conn., is looking at the former St. Raymond Paper Co. paper-mill site as a possible location for a plant that would remove ink from old newspapers and magazines, recycle it into pulp and ship it to paper-making mills.

The pulp would then be mixed with wood pulp to make paper products.

Newsprint is one of the most easily recycled commodities, after cardboard and aluminum, but so many communities have started separating newspapers from the rest of the trash that the market for old newsprint is glutted.

Last January the Maine Legislature’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee killed a bill to phase in quotas for recycled newsprint use by the state’s publishers.