If you ask the average Mainer how they feel about the state-owned landfill serving as the dumping ground for waste from other states, you probably won’t find many that think it’s the way life should be.
In fact, the Maine Legislature sanctioned the state-owned Juniper Ridge Landfill in Old Town in the early aughts precisely because, unlike in a privately-owned landfill, doing so allowed control of the waste coming into its facility. The thinking was that such control would ensure capacity for Maine generated waste for years to come.
And yet, hundreds of thousands of tons of out-of-state waste are annually making their way to Juniper Ridge. The seeming contradiction between intent and practice is at the heart of a bill back before Maine’s Environment and Natural Resources Committee this session, LD 1639, “An Act to Protect the Health and Welfare of Maine Communities and Reduce Harmful Solid Waste,” sponsored by Sen. Anne Carney of Cumberland.
This bill aims to stem the importation to Maine of construction and demolition debris, known in the waste management industry as CDD, primarily from Massachusetts, which in 2005 banned CDD disposal in its own backyard.
We wrote about this bill last year when it was first discussed in the legislature as part of our series of Garbage from Away columns. The bill was carried over to the current session and we recently tuned in to a January work session that provided some surprising developments in this convoluted legislative thicket.
Among the speakers featured at the work session were the two main corporate opponents to the bill, ReSource of Lewiston and Casella Waste Services. ReSource operates a facility that takes in CDD, 90% of which comes from out-of-state. The plant reclaims a small amount of the material it receives and sends most of the remainder (190,000 tons in 2020) to Juniper Ridge. Casella, a large waste service provider in the Northeast, manages the Juniper Ridge facility for the state under one of its subsidiary companies NEWSME, LLC.
At the heart of the issue is a long-standing legal redefinition of any out-of-state CDD that has passed through a Maine-based processing facility like the Lewiston plant as “waste generated in Maine.” Moreover, a law just enacted in 2020 (LD 401) requires Maine processing facilities to “recycle to the maximum extent possible, but in no case at a rate less than 50%.” A carefully-worded exemption, however, reduced that rate for ReSource of Lewiston to only 15% for 2021 and 20% for 2022. Removing that generous carve out for ReSource is the primary target of LD 1639.
Representatives of both ReSource and Casella defended the status quo. ReSource argued that the proposed change could drive them out of business with potentially disastrous economic consequences for their 40 or so employees, as well as the numerous private haulers with which they contract. They implored the committee to allow them time to adapt to the 2020 legislation and its 15% and 20% recycling requirements, insisting that they have recently invested more than $1 million to upgrade the Lewiston plant to do so.
For its part, Casella contended that it relies on the material coming from ReSource to be able to successfully conduct the daily operations of the state-owned landfill. Material from ReSource comes in two forms. Some comes as bulky waste, such as old sofas and mattresses, and is used to stabilize municipal sludge from Maine wastewater treatment plants, which has been arriving at elevated rates in recent years. Most, though, comes as a crushed residue known as “fines” used to cover the landfill at day’s end to minimize odors and deter scavengers. Casella emphasized that it did not accept waste from out-of-state at Juniper Ridge, and that the “fines” that it gets from ReSource are essential as daily cover. Without them, Casella claimed, it would need to utilize “virgin” soil to cover the landfill.
The most compelling part of the work session arose from the reactions of committee members. While Rep. Hanley of Pittston was appalled over the possibility that the committee would consider jeopardizing ReSource without allowing it time to adapt to the 2020 legislation, other committee members, notably Senator Bennett of Oxford, seemed less sympathetic to the arguments made by ReSource and Casella.
Senator Bennett pushed back on the notion that ReSource of Lewiston is a small Maine-based business. He sought clarification that Resource, itself a subsidiary of Albany-based ReEnergy Holdings LLC – operator of four additional processing facilities in Massachusetts and New Hampshire – had been acquired in November 2021 by GCM Grosvenor an asset management company worth $70 billion.
While ReSource President and Chief Operating Officer Greg Leahey rejected the characterization as an acquisition preferring instead to describe it as a partnership, he acknowledged that GCM Grosvenor does indeed hold a majority of corporate shares. Although not explicitly stated, the implication was to question whether the Legislature should be in the business of providing backstops for entities with deep pockets that may have little long-term fidelity to their business holdings in Maine.
Senator Bennett also took issue with Casella’s assessment that the only viable alternative to “fines” from ReSource is “virgin” soil insisting that it ignored other options such as tarps used at other landfills. After multiple thwarted attempts to get details on fees that Casella receives for accepting ReSource’s “fines,” an exasperated Bennett threw up his hands that Casella could claim such information was proprietary and not made transparent to the committee.
Finally, what became frustratingly clear to committee members is that while large amounts of out-of-state CDD makes its way annually to the state-owned landfill through the existing legal pathway, most Maine generated CDD is, in fact, being directly landfilled in a privately-owned landfill in Norridgewock.
The solution seemed obvious. Why not divert Maine CDD currently being landfilled at Norridgewock to replace the out-of-state material going to Juniper Ridge? Though the specifics are obscured, it is safe to say that economic incentives are not there at this time for private industry to do this on its own. Whether this bill would change that financial calculus is unclear.
Regardless of the outcome, the fact that the ENR Committee is wrestling with how to do right by the people of Maine when it comes to disposal of waste from away in our publicly-owned landfill is encouraging.
(Mark Ward and Michael Uhl are citizen journalists investigating recycling and waste-management issues in Lincoln County. Mark, of Bristol, is a biologist. Michael, of Walpole, is a writer.)
