Maine legislature considers pause in landmark landfill law

AUGUSTA, Maine - Maine legislators are considering changes -- and a delay -- to the new law that bans out-of-state trash from being dumped in Maine-owned landfill.

Monday’s public hearing before the Environment and Natural Resources Committee considered legislation that would pause the ban, which went into effect in February, for two years.

A proposed compromise would allow Casella, which has a long-term contract with the state to run the Juniper Ridge Landfill, near Old Town, to accept roughly 10% of the construction and demolition debris that used to be trucked into Maine from Massachusetts, about 25 tons annually.

Casella has told legislators it needs more bulky waste to keep the landfill stable and to accept a surge of wet PFAS-laden sludge from municipal wastewater treatment plants.

Another law passed last year bans the spreading of sludge on Maine land, due to the presence toxic of PFAS “forever chemicals.”

Jeff Weld, Casella’s Director of Communications, said in an interview, “The two laws were diametrically opposed -- that you cannot stop the marketing and selling of biosolids as a spreadable fertilizer and at the same time expect them to show up in a landfill and be bulked with nothing.”

The Maine Department of Environmental Protection came out Monday in support of amending the law.

“We do agree that probably in the short-term ensuring that there is additional bulky material that would be available for landfilling will reduce the uncertainty for the wastewater treatment plants primarily,” MDEP Commissioner Melanie Loyzim said in an interview. “We don’t want Maine communities to face another round of wondering whether or not they’re going to be able to have a home for their sludge. We do not want to be dealing with wastewater treatment plants figuring our whether they can stockpile it or feeling the need to make statements like, ‘Oh, well, we might just have to discharge it into rivers.”

Loyzim told the committee one goal is to send more Maine-based construction and demolition debris to the Juniper Ridge Landfill. She said the volume of in-state waste woodchips and sawdust, for example, has been too small, and the state may want to target abandoned buildings for demolition to bulk up the landfill.

Legislators first questioned Casella executives about the spike in March.

In February, Casella began charging cities and towns up to 50% more to truck and dispose of their municipal sludge far north of the landfill to a facility in New Brunswick, Canada.

Rep. Melanie Sachs, (D) Freeport called the rate increases “unconscionable,” telling the committee, “Casella, in my view. has created a public health crisis and extorted huge increase from Maine ratepayers.”

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