BDN: “Prospective Hampden waste plant buyer listed people as technical advisers without their knowledge.”
SOMESVILLE, April 11, 2021 - The Bangor Daily News has published a solid piece of investigative journalism. https://bangordailynews.com/2021/04/10/news/bangor/prospective-hampden-waste-plant-buyer-listed-people-as-technical-advisers-without-their-knowledge/
Some BDN readers are calling for an investigation in the comments attached to the article:
MaineMasker Ditch this sludge fudge pack of con men & women.
Start over.
Hire the best minds and experts or scrap the whole thing now if you don't have or won't spend, the money.
Ask the AG's office to investigate the current lies told by these liars and once that surface is scratched, other carpetbaggers will think twice about trying to fleece you.
Fred_derf The AG might want to investigate the almost criminal ineptitude of the MRC before looking into companies it has picked.
"The Municipal Review Committee does not think PERC will continue to operate after the loss in revenue in 2018... ."
Well here we are in April of 2021, PERC is still operating and MRC still doesn't have a working plant in Hampden.
At this point, the 50 or so towns that voted to stay with PERC are looking like geniuses and MRC is looking like "whatever".
If the BDN and a few others can find out all this information/disinformation about Delta Thermo why can't MRC?
What exactly is MRC's fancy "technical advisor" doing? And how much is he getting paid for his advice?
MemerelLouise Amazing how honest these people are! They are honest enough to add peoples names to their "Technical Advisory Board"---and these folks that are named have not even heard of this company!!! So if they can add names so easily and dishonestly, just imagine what they will do with the trash! I know we have smart people in Maine who could undertake this project----why go get "experts" from other states? If they are as expert as they claim they are, they should have enough in their state to keep them busy---I smell a rotten potato in the bunch!!!! Or maybe a whole barrel of rotten potatoes---
jalbertini So these are the people we are not only trusting with our trash and recyclables but also to protect our environment?! They seem quite unethical and unprofessional.
Joe Get ready for either a big hole being dug to bury the stuff or just another new mountain of trash plastic covered appearing.
fakenamefornow If they could only get a little bit more of the states money they could turn it all around. Just a little bit more. Promise.
common_sense So they play a little fast and loose with the facts; what could go wrong?
ScubaThis is such an obvious boondoggle it’s ridiculous.
The following are two earlier QSJ articles on the matter:
One man in Lamoine presaged the Fiberight fiasco and steered the town away from MRC
SOMESVILLE, Jan. 30, 2021 – On the pecking order of least desirable waste management solutions, landfills rank at the very top. Incineration would probably be next. And of course, recycling is the piece de resistance.
Yet, members of the 117-town Municipal Review Committee have been using the two least desirable solutions now for most of the last two years as it awaits the promise of the shuttered Fiberight plant to bear fruit.
But long before the recycling plant in Hampden had its untimely seizure last May, one man saw the train wreck coming and steered the Town of Lamoine away. Today, Lamoine is the only town in Hancock County still recycling, as well as incinerating its solid waste.
Ken Smith, Lamoine resident, environmental engineer and seasoned facilities operator, was tapped by Lamoine selectmen to offer his recommendation in 2016, as MRC towns were raging to join up with a new player, Fiberight, to replace an Orrington incineration plant they used for 20 years.
Smith observed that he had never seen a “pilot concept” as devised by Fiberight be employed as a major facility without being fully tested. Smith said if the Fiberight plant works, there will be a great benefit, according to the minutes of the 2016 selectmen’s meeting, but he had many doubts. http://www.lamoine-me.gov/Town%20Hall/Boards/Selectmen/Minutes/2016/smin032416pdf.pdf
“There is a significant effort to putting 5-technologies to work together in one plant, and that’s a risk,” The minutes stated. “He said such ideas often underestimate the costs, and there is risk prior to construction.”
Smith cited potential liabilities if the project failed, including having to incinerate and haul trash to landfills.
And of course that’s exactly what happened – during both the startup period for the plant in 2019 and since May 2020 when it closed – MRC having to truck hundreds of thousand tons of waste to the Orrington incinerator and the landfill in Norridgewock.
Meanwhile, Lamoine residents fill up two large containers each week with paper, boxes and plastics to be taken to ecomaine, which serves 65 communities, mostly in Southern Maine, and its solid waste to the Orrington incinerator. (See related story below).
Waste consortium failing to fully vet new vendor, SWH official says
SOUTHWEST HARBOR, Jan. 28, 2021 – The vice chair of the SWH Warrant Committee and an environmental expert on waste disposal is questioning the level of scrutiny being conducted on the company seeking to re-open the mothballed recycling plant in Hampden.
Jim Vallette, president of Materials Research LC3, appeared Tuesday at the Zoom meeting of the Municipal Review Committee, the consortium of the 117 Maine towns which relied on the plant for recycling until it was shut down last May. He cited the failed financial history of Delta Thermo Energy’s operation in Allentown, Pa. and asked members if they knew of it.
Delta is seeking to replace Coastal Resources Inc., a division of Fiberight Corp. which ran out of money and closed the plant in May, forcing the towns to ship their waste to an incinerator in Orrington. There has been no recycling since.
MRC chair Karen Fussel said on Zoom the financial “due diligence” was being performed by the bondholders who own the plant as the MRC only owns the land. But MRC Director Michael Carroll said he has reviewed the financial records of the company and is satisfied it has the needed financing.
Fussel has not returned several of QSJ requests for an interview. QSJ would have asked her if she understood that the bondholders are only concerned with a financial deal and not whether Delta can truly execute its promised environmentally disposition of waste from the member towns.
For instance, Vallette asked about Delta’s plans for handling sewage sludge as mentioned in an earlier board meeting. MRC consultant George Aronson said any proposal to burn such sludge would require new state permits.
Vallette called MRC’s level of due diligence “shocking” in an interview with the QSJ. “They seem to be getting all their information from the company.”
Delta CEO Rob Van Naarden has a colorful and complicated history, including a troubled past as CEO of a kosher chicken producer, engagement with the City of Allentown which resulted in Delta losing its contract amid an FBI corruption probe, a returned check from the State of Pennsylvania for lack of funds and this statement from Mark Pederson, president of the Pennsylvania Waste Industries Association in December 2013 to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection:
“Delta Thermo made a number of materially false statements to the public regarding
their proposed project and the waste disposal industry as a whole…. Delta Thermo’s continued use of false environmental marketing claims in discussing its project are
unacceptable to PWIA and its members, and are wholly inconsistent with the
environmentally responsible management of solid waste upon which our members pride
themselves…. Delta Thermo denies that it is in the waste disposal business or subject to
the stringent air permitting requirements that apply to companies in the waste disposal
business… (T)here is no indication that anyone has ever ‘commercially’ operated a plant
of this design, field by a mixture of MSW and wastewater treatment plant sludge,
anywhere in the world…. Delta Thermo’s discussion of ambient air impacts on the
neighboring citizens was intentionally misleading.”
Vallette shared a document with QSJ consisting of his recent research into Delta. https://docs.google.com/document/d/10ghk9IGV1eCNYaUvpVKuWfc7DxhxuWUqO7vWfoajP58/edit
“Southwest Harbor is one of 115 communities relying upon the Municipal Review Committee (MRC) to find positive uses for our town’s waste, through technologies that are not expensive, recycle waste, don’t pollute, and do not expose us to potential liabilities,” he wrote. “Our hopes are threatened when a cutting-edge (that is, high-risk) facility like Fiberight is placed in the hands of a company – Delta Thermal Energy (DTE) — with no track record, or worse, a company that has been rejected by at least seven communities and has the ultimate goal of burning toxic sewage sludge, to be barged into the Penobscot Bay from cities throughout the East Coast.”
“The bottom line: this company, with a mysterious overseas owner and no fixed address, and a troubling track record, has been rejected by town after town in the mid-Atlantic. Now it plans to deliver NYC sewage sludge by barge to Hampden for incineration, and the MRC thinks this is going to be good business for the towns.”
QSJ has been conducting its own research, especially the FBI investigation in Allentown which resulted in the conviction of its mayor and a half dozen city officials in 2018.
Van Naarden said in an interview he voluntarily turned 10,000 documents over to the FBI seven year ago when he learned of the investigation. Asked whether the FBI relied on those documents, he said, “I have no idea.”
City officials canceled its contract with Delta and publicly blamed the company for failing to attain the necessary financing to proceed which Van Naarden said were untrue. Delta won the contract in a public bidding beating out 47 competitors.
Van Naarden said he disclosed this sordid history to the management team and board members at MRC. However, two members, Bob Butler of Waldoboro and Irene Belanger of the town of China, said they had no recollection of an FBI investigation in Allentown when QSJ called them over the weekend. There is no evidence Delta was ever a subject of the probe, only that it cooperated with the FBI.
MRC Director Michael Carroll affirmed that board members were told after his management team discovered the Allentown history while doing due diligence on the company. His team included two attorneys. He was not aware of Van Naarden’s previous history in selling chickens, nor was he aware of the returned check in Pennsylvania.
In 2004, while Van Naarden was CEO of Empire Kosher products, Trader Joe’s removed Empire products from its shelves, according to the Jewish Journal reported, “‘The Empire chicken people are no longer able to supply our needs,’ said Pat St. John, vice president of marketing for Trader Joe’s West Coast corporate office…. Managers at the Trader Joe’s in West Hills and West Los Angeles attributed the change to Empire short-weighting their products. One manager said that packages Empire marked as containing 3 pounds of chicken were found, when weighed at the store, to contain only 2.5 pounds.”
In 2005, Empire Kosher Poultry’s supplier, Alle Processing Corp., detected Listeria spp in its processing plant in Maspeth, N.Y. and was temporarily shut down by the USDA. Subsequently, Alle voluntarily recalled two Empire branded products — IQF Buffalo Style Wings and Fried Chicken Assorted Pieces — produced in Alle’s facility. Van Naarden left the company in 2006.
The MRC board is notoriously hands off. Members relied heavily on information provided by the previous operator of the plant, Coastal Resources, which repeatedly claimed it was solvent and even was adding new customers as late as April 2020. At its April 2020 board meeting, executives from Coastal’s parent company Fiberight said they expected to close on a $14.5 bridge loan “by the end of the week.” That closing never happened, Carroll said the bondholders, wary of the impact of the pandemic, decided against the bridge loan which forced the plant to close.
MDI has three different contracts with MRC. Southwest Harbor and Bar Harbor have their own. Mount Desert, Tremont, Frenchboro, Cranberry Isles and Trenton comprise the Acadia Disposal District, whose chair, Tony Smith, MD public works director, did not return calls from QSJ.
Carey Donovan, who represents Tremont in the district, expressed concern about whether MRC will be able to avoid incineration. “Van Naardan stated clearly that he believes nothing should go to an incinerator, and yet it appears that incineration is his mainstay for dealing with trash,” Donovan said.
The MRC appears to be on fast track to close its new contracts with Delta. It signed a memorandum of understanding in secret in December and refused to disclose the name of the company. It invoked an exemption to the Maine Freedom of Access Law. It then introduced Delta in a “town hall” meeting Jan. 19 but has been selective about what information it discloses. Vallette and QSJ unearthed all the above information in less than a week.
MRC is a hurry to re-open the plant, saying Delta will operate the current technology and execute all the municipal contracts. But long term, Van Naarden said the technology will have to be replaced. Exactly what that entails is unclear.