In 1989, lawmakers set a goal in state law that the state would recycle 50 percent of its municipal solid waste by 2009. Maine didn’t make the deadline, and in 2012, lawmakers opted for a little more breathing room, making Jan. 1, 2014, the date when the state would reach the 50 percent threshold.
Maine residents today are producing less trash, but the state still hasn’t gotten to its 50 percent recycling target. In 2012, the most recent year for which data are available, Maine’s towns and cities recycled 42.38 percent of their solid waste, according to a Maine Department of Environmental Protection report prepared earlier this year.
Through the 1990s and 2000s, Maine made virtually no progress in boosting its recycling rate. It peaked in 1997 at 42 percent before dropping to a low of 34.8 percent in 2007. It’s encouraging that Maine’s recycling rate has at least returned to 1997 levels, but the state still has a long way to go.
The progress Maine has yet to make is, perhaps, the best lens through which to view the Maine DEP’s recent rejection of a municipal group’s bid to build its own landfill in Argyle Township or Greenbush.
The goal for a 50 percent recycling rate outlined in state law is just that, a goal. And the solid waste management hierarchy outlined in statute — which makes it state policy to reduce, reuse, recycle and compost as much waste as possible before incinerating and landfilling it — is just a policy statement. The DEP’s ability to say no to a request for a new landfill is the department’s rare enforcement mechanism for those laws.
In its decision on the Municipal Review Committee’s request for a public benefit determination, the DEP said the committee’s choice to pursue a landfill first goes against the solid waste hierarchy.
To be sure, the Municipal Review Committee is also planning a zero-sort, integrated waste management facility that removes recyclables from the waste stream and processes much of what remains into a marketable fuel. But it hasn’t finalized those plans, and the DEP couldn’t fully consider them in making a decision on the committee’s landfill request.
Even as the committee plans its move away from use of the Penobscot Energy Recovery Co. incinerator in Orrington in 2018, the 187 towns and cities the committee represents will need a long-term solution for the waste that can’t be recycled or processed into a fuel. Without an expansion, the Juniper Ridge Landfill in Old Town that receives most of PERC’s residue will be full in about seven years, according to the DEP.
So what’s the best way forward?
The Municipal Review Committee has rightly decided to continue pursuing the development of its integrated waste management facility. As for the landfill solution, Juniper Ridge operator Casella Waste Systems could pursue the 9.35-million-cubic-yard expansion for which it has preliminary authority or the state could allow development of the undeveloped Carpenter Ridge Landfill near Lincoln.
All involved in the waste disposal business have a responsibility to divert as much waste as possible from landfills. But that doesn’t change the reality that the state will need a viable landfill solution soon.