SWH selectman mulls major changes to waste disposal pact to stem 'free ride' by businesses, Acadia NP, Coast Guard

“A sustainability committee is not a dinner party” - Mao Tse Tung

SOUTHWEST HARBOR, Feb. 17, 2024 - Okay. Okay. He didn’t actually say that.

But where is a “sustainability” committee when you really need one, beyond erecting a few solar panels?

Right here in River City we have an actual, full-blown environmental crisis of our own making for which we have made only the smallest effort to correct.

That is, in 2024, we are collectively about to put the greatest stress on our regional landfills, the lowest rung on the so-called waste hierarchy ranked by desirable environmental solutions.

If both the incinerator in Orrington and the regional waste plant in Hampden fail to come on line in 2024 and 2025, the landfills in Old Town, Norridgewock and elsewhere in Maine will be pushed to the max, their methane excretion contributing to the third foulest pollution of mankind and their leachate continuing to seep into the ground water below.

“It sucks,” said Michael Carroll, director of the 115-town Municipal Review Committee, about the situation. The MRC is forbidden by contract from filling up the Juniper Ridge landfill in Old Town, Carroll said. For every ton the MRC brings to Old Town, Juniper Ridge must divert a similar amount to the Crossroads landfill in Norridgewock, he said. He agreed that moving the garbage around does not benefit the landfills in the long run.

That’s little comfort to the citizen groups, environmentalists and the Penobscot Nation who attended a public hearing Thursday night in Brewer to oppose extension of a contract for the waste management company Casella to operate Juniper Ridge. That contract has another 10 years before it expires, but the current proposal would add another six years onto it, through 2040, and allow Casella to expand the landfill.

At this rate, Juniper Ridge would run out of space by 2028, according to the Bangor Daily News.

Waste disposal is a silent crisis. We go about our daily lives filling up garbage bags and tossing them into nondescript bins where they become someone else’s problem.

The Bar Harbor Town Council, which has a standing “climate emergency” task force, would rather spend its time debating a solar farm on an abandoned brownfield on Rt. 3.

But in FY25, BH taxpayers face a 23 percent increase in the cost to dispose garbage generated mostly by tourists. The $1,222,450 budget item is the fastest growing part of a proposed record $14 million municipal budget.

Only the Town of Southwest Harbor on MDI has been having a serious conversation about its trash - where it comes from, how much there is, how effective is its recycling, whether the disposal cost is fair and even how to produce less of it.

Select member Jim Vallette, who runs an environmental consulting firm, isn’t holding back from asking all the impolite questions and asserting that many large producers of garbage are unfairly taxing the system. He aired his thoughts Tuesday at the select board meeting starting at 1:08 into the meeting.

“The contract we have now sets up a really regressive tax on the lowest waste generators in town.

“We have large generators that don't pay any taxes, and we pay for an unlimited amount of waste that they generate.

“An example of that is the Coast Guard station. Twice a week, Gott’s (garbage truck owner) picks up the six-yard dumpster along with the two-yard dumpster. A six-yard dumpster can hold 500 pounds of waste. You're talking about over a ton, potentially each week, coming from the Coast Guard station.”

Vallette’s target, Eastern Maine Recycling in Southwest Harbor, is one of only three such private transfer stations in Maine but serves five municipalities. Vallette has not hid his opinion that SWH taxpayers have gotten a raw deal from EMR and has publicly stated so. He also has questioned EMR’s environmental record.

Its owner, Ben “Lee” Worcester, wears more hats on the island than a hat shop. Among multiple boards, he is chair of the Acadia National Park Advisory Commission. He also owns the town’s largest private campground and is one of the park’s largest vendors. At one public meeting attended by the QSJ, he characterized the trash from the park’s campgrounds as the lowest form of garbage.

“Half empty ketchup jars, milk cartons … you name it,” he said. But his job is not to judge. His job is simply to move the detritus from his transfer station where it would be hauled to a landfill. If he profits inordinately by that effort, as asserted by Vallette, so be it.

Which makes Vallette’s public takedown of EMR even more extraordinary in a small town in Maine where such practices rarely gather the patina of controversy.

Vallette said, “The fact is that we the taxpayers pay three times for waste - once when it arrives at EMR, second time when it's transported from EMR to whatever is designated as the location … and the third time is the tipping fees.

“We the taxpayers are paying EMR for for unlimited amount of waste,” he said.

“Let's say you're a very conscientious resident and you try to reduce your waste.

“You go up and drop off one or two bags a week like many of us do.

“That's a lot different than say a campground generating one or two deliveries in itself or two or three as long as campground pays like $9,000 in property taxes and he's getting at least a $7,000 benefit.

“The town is paying the transfer station to receive the latest from the campground, transport it to wherever.”

In all the stages, “We the taxpayers are on the hook.”

Vallette actually cited a specific enterprise, the Claremont Hotel, as an example of a business getting a free ride from taxpayers.

“Say the Claremont whatever they're generating there .. and the Coast Guard paying zero taxes. We're paying the bill there. We're paying everything for them. That's the free ride.”

Imagine Bar Harbor councilors calling out big producers of garbage by name - like any of the the restaurants suing the town over its cruise ship visitation cap.

Property taxes paid by these properties are based on the assessed value of what they are worth. That does not include the additional demand they put on public services, such as waste disposal, sewer, public safety, public works.

Aside from the intramural bouts of a highly dysfunctional municipality, the larger question is why the rest of us on the island have to pay for Bar Harbor’s lack of control. You might as well construct a funnel at Bar Harbor’s transfer station and main line the methane directly into the air.

It would be a lot cheaper and environmentally friendlier than hauling the stuff to Old Town where it would have the same effect on humankind.

Vallette wants to copy Ellsworth’s $3 a bag model no matter whose trash it is and no matter who delivers it to the transfer station. He also wants a legal opinion on the \ current EMR contract which will be automatically renewed for five years unless the select board sends a notice to terminate. Here is Vallette’s memo shared with the select board Tuesday.

FOOTNOTE: The incinerator in Orrington has been shut down for the winter with no obvious activity to suggest it will come on line any time soon, according to industry observers who added that the purchase of the plant by out-of-state investors did not come with the necessary DEP permits.

In Hampden, the state permitted new owners Innovative Resource Recovery in January to treat a small amount of trash each week - about 2,000 tons - as it begins to test its “anaerobic digestion” technology.

MRC director Michel Carroll is nervously watching IRR’s progress as it is the primary hope the region will have an alternative to landfills. IRR isn’t expecting full operations until 2026. In the meantime, Carroll said MRC members should reach out to IRR CEO James Condela to show support.

The MRC sold the plant to IRR for $3 million in July 2023. IRR said it is expecting to invest $35 to $40 million to restart the plant, which was closed in May 2020 when the previous owner ran out of operating cash. That kind of cash commitment will come only if the company is confident in its business plan.