BREAKING NEWS: Winning bid for incinerator only begs for more answers
UPDATES: Book launch in Northeast Harbor; Long Pond mystery solved
ORRINGTON, Nov. 13, 2023 - The auction today for the incineration plant here won by two businessmen from the South left more questions than answers about the future of the region’s waste disposal.
The two, Mark Boswell from Sarasota, FL., and Bill Richardson of Little Rock, Ark., placed the bid for $1.2 million for the remaining assets of the incineration plant previously owned by the Penobscot Energy Recovery Company, which served the region for 30 years until it imploded under financial stress.
They won under the shingle, “C&M Faith Holdings.” Why Boswell, who fronts another company called Marc David Green Solutions, felt the need for another LLC is unclear. Both companies have the same promise: Use a technology they borrowed from a Kentucky plant to turn garbage into a usable gas to produce energy.
But the incineration plant here has multiple challenges. It badly needs updating and is facing a winter with potential ruination unless it plugs up all the leaks. It has 10,000 tons of garbage at the plant which must be disposed of, probably at a seven-figure cost.
The plant owes about $765,000 in real estate and personal property taxes.
After the auction, Boswell told the Bangor Daily News that he hopes to get PERC winterized and bring the furloughed employees back, but he was not sure when the plant will be able to start accepting trash again as they have to deal with the 10,000 tons of trash already in the plant.
In the longer term, Boswell said he wants to start incorporating his company’s technology for turning waste gas into electricity, which he hopes will cut down how much trash needs to go into landfills.
That technology is now being used at a plant in Kentucky, Boswell said.
Boswell and Richardson have visited PERC multiple times and respect the knowledge of its employees, they told the BDN.
The town of Orrington voted Monday to waive the foreclosure of PERC’s 2021 taxes. Instead of a due date of Nov. 22, the buyer has a year to pay them, Town Manager Chris Backman said.
A lot of the trash has “decomposed significantly,” Plant Manager Henry Lang said. There is cleanup that needs to happen. The trash can still be burned, but it would take a lot of fuel oil and the plant’s emissions would be high, he said.
The waste from 159 towns have been hauled mostly to landfills since the large plant in Hampden servicing 115 town closed in May 2020 and PERC closed earlier this year.
Book event in Northeast Harbor; Mystery of Long Pond plane explained
NORTHEAST HARBOR - Make haste for the library Wednesday at 5:30 for the book event of the season.
The publisher’s blurb stated, '“In Sunrise and the Real World, Martha Tod Dudman has penned a taut and spellbinding coming-of-age novel that will stay with you long into the night.
“When Lorraine, a recent college graduate, starts work at a residential treatment center for troubled teens, she quickly finds herself absorbed into a world very distant from the idyllic lobsters-and-lighthouses fairy tale she had always associated with Maine. Instead, she discovers a landscape of abused and angry teenagers, illicit romance, and danger. Still, she grows to love the place and its people until events shatter her confidence in the world and her own morality. Years later, disheartened and battered by life, Lorraine is unexpectedly drawn back to that world to confront the person she was, the choices she made, and the bitter ghosts that still haunt her.”
Some of us know Martha as the longtime member of the select board here.
She is the author of four books: Dawn (Puckerbrush Press, 1989), Augusta, Gone (Simon & Schuster, 2001), Expecting to Fly (Simon & Schuster, 2004), and Black Olives (Simon & Schuster, 2008). Augusta, Gone was adapted as an award-winning Lifetime production. Her new novel is published by Islandport Press.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri and raised in Washington, D.C, Dudman went to Antioch College and moved to Maine in 1975, first to Little Cranberry Island, then to Northeast Harbor.
Dudman is a director of the Maine Humanities Council and a director at Bar Harbor Bank & Trust.
She was president and general manager of a group of radio stations in Ellsworth and Bangor, which included WDEA, and then worked as a professional fundraising consultant, helping raise millions of dollars for Maine nonprofits.
My copy of Sunrise and the Real World is in the mail and will soon land on the shelf where I stack books by my favorite local authors. They include:
Ruth Moore, Marguerite Yourcenar, Christina Baker Kline, Jim Sterba, Frances FitzGerald, Henry Raup, Ralph Stanley, Don Cote, Gigi Georges, Colin Woodard, Julia Child and Thomas Vining.
I’m thinking Jennifer Lawrence would be the perfect Lorraine as an actress who could probably play both the older Lorraine and the recent college grad.
Copies of the book will be available for sale and signing. You may register for the event here.
Uncanny videos of the same seaplane on Long Pond
LONG POND - Mystery solved. A reader informed me that my video of the water craft which took off from Long Pond Aug. 24 was that of Dr. Mark Kandutsch of Bar Harbor. Here was the video from my canoe. I was having a pretty good morning fishing until this Rube Goldberg invention showed up.
Another reader informed me that this is a class called “ultralights.” This was an amphibian version. Double click to view.
I found another video of the exact same flight posted on Facebook taken from the wing of the aircraft. This was a rare capture by two cameras of the same takeoff by an ultralight on Long Pond.
My video showed only the takeover. The plane’s video recorded the entire trip, including spectacular views of Blue Hill Bay!
Very cool. Enjoy!