The process has been going on for more than four years, but Casella Waste Systems and the state moved closer today to getting a decision on their planned expansion of the Juniper Ridge Landfill near Old Town. During the first of two days of public hearings in Bangor before the Maine Board of Environmental Protection, Cassellas engineering team provided extensive studies in support of the project — but critics remain wary.
For 13 years, Casella has operated the state-owned Juniper Ridge Landfill in Alton, a disposal site for residues from the state’s waste-to-energy facilities and other refuse. It’s a large landfill but one that is running out of room. So the company and the state want the Board of Environmental Protection to approve an expansion plan that would increase the facility’s capacity from 10 million cubic yards to nearly double that amount. The expansion would extend the landfill’s operational capacity by nearly 10 years to around 2027 or longer, depending on increased recycling efforts.
“We are by far the largest recycler in the state of Maine,” said Toni King.
King, a regional engineer for Casella, says her company’s recycling policies will ensure that the additional capacity will be utilized judiciously through efficient recycling programs.
“Simply put, the waste disposed at Juniper Ridge landfill is reduced to the maximum extent practical, diverted where appropriate and 90% has already been processed or is a recycling residual for which a landfill is the most appropriate end of life solution,” King says.
Casella engineers provided board members with an extensive analysis that they say supports their position that the geological characteristics of the region and the technology being used would provide a safe waste containment area for decades to come. John Sevee, a regional engineer for Casella said the area’s soil composition would be able to support the added waste capacity at the landfill.
“The clay nature of the till gives it its relatively low permeability,” Seevee says. “That low permeability is a desirable characteristic because by having some thing that has a lower permeability, if there were to be a leak or a spill of leachate at the site you want a soil that retards the movement of that so you can get in there and clean it up.”
Opponents of the plan are not necessarily swayed by the science and those abutting the property want assurances that landfill leakage will never contaminate the groundwater in the region. Others, such as Dana Snowman, an intervenor in the Casalla application, question the company’s claims that none of the waste that’s being buried in his town comes from out of state.
“There’s been I believe a concerted effort to hide the amount of garbage that originated out of state going into that dump and I would just like to have them admit it,” Snowman said. “If the general public wants a dump that’s half full of out-of-state garbage. then that’s fine with me.”
Other Alton landowners, such as Larry Beauregard, of Brewer, say while they would prefer to not have a larger landfill in town, the engineering studies offered some reassurance.