Nearly 160 towns in central and northern Maine are sending their unprocessed trash to a state-owned landfill in Old Town, creating what a Maine representative and area officials are calling an emergency.
Since other area facilities have closed, there is no viable source to accept the trash, they said, and sending municipal solid waste to a landfill is considered a last resort.
A state-of-the-art trash plant in Hampden, which served 115 municipalities, stopped operating in 2020. In May, the Penobscot Energy Recovery Co.’s trash plant in Orrington that served 44 towns also ceased operations.
It has caused an emergency that proposed legislation aims to address. The bill, sponsored by Rep. James Dill, D-Old Town, directs the state to investigate solutions to the solid waste management crisis and report its findings by June 1, 2024.
Concerns about the thousands of tons of trash sent to Juniper Ridge and the lack of disposal options are the latest in an ongoing crisis that has gripped Old Town for years. People are worried that Maine’s largest landfill could fill five years prematurely, according to a draft of the legislation.
“There are 159 towns sending direct, unprocessed trash to Old Town,” City Manager Bill Mayo said. “This has never happened in the past, and it has people in town worried.”
Juniper Ridge opened in 1993 to collect waste from the nearby mill in Old Town, but the amount and type of waste coming to the landfill has evolved over the years. Now, more communities than ever are sending their trash there, which has area residents and officials concerned that it will fill up too quickly.
Old Town city councilors, landfill committee members and others hope the state will take a deeper look at what is happening at Juniper Ridge and come to the table with solutions, he said. Mayo is in the process of drafting a letter to Maine Gov. Janet Mills to keep this issue top of mind.
Juniper Ridge accepts residues from waste-to-energy facilities, construction debris and other wastes generated in Maine, according to the state. A fire at the landfill in May, which happened amid a sludge crisis, sparked concerns from nearby residents. They worried about the effects on their health and the environment.
The landfill accepted 73,338 tons of waste in September, according to its monthly status report. Nine complaints, all of them about odor, were documented last month, a notable increase from previous months. Data show one or two complaints per month was typical during 2023, besides four documented in January.
Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection approved an expansion of Juniper Ridge in 2017 and granted a license for 9.3 million cubic yards of capacity of the 22 million cubic yards available, according to the proposed legislation.
“As a result of these ‘temporary’ increases in disposal of MSW [municipal solid waste] and WWTP [wastewater treatment plant] sludge at the Juniper Ridge Landfill, the partial expansion, which was expected to last through 2033, is now expected to use that capacity by 2028, thus necessitating another permitting process to complete the expansion,” the document said.
The loss of services at Hampden and Orrington facilities has placed stress on the 159 municipalities that are obligated to provide municipal solid waste disposal, the document said.
It is also straining Maine’s sewer and utility resources and “consuming valuable and finite state-owned solid waste landfill resources which are supposed to be the last resort.”
The proposed bill has a long way to go, but it directs Maine’s Bureau of General Services and the Maine DEP to meet with public and private solid waste management facilities to find short- and long-term solutions for the 159 towns sending trash to Old Town. The legislation calls for a written report with recommendations to be submitted to the Committee on Environment and Natural Resources.
Dill is open-minded about potential solutions, he said, but lawmakers must also be aware of unintended consequences.
“We just can’t have all this trash going to the landfill,” he said. “It will fill up too fast, and we don’t have many landfills in the state. There has got to be another way to deal with solid waste.”