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Tell us what you think!Send a letter to the editor about this or any other article in The Maine Campus.
We are writing in response to the Monday, Nov. 15 story in The Maine Campus by Michael Shepherd on University of Maine President Robert Kennedy’s being one of five managers on the Old Town Great Works LLC.
This response comes as we also see a “Notice to bidders / manufactures” from UMaine in the Nov. 15 Bangor Daily News, which is a request for proposals for a “… boiler … firing natural gas and / or landfill gas.”
In The Maine Campus article, Old Town City Manager Peggy Daigle dismisses concerns about Kennedy’s involvement by describing landfill opponents as “trying to cloud the issue by being so aggressively passionate about their angst over the landfill and anything landfill-related …” The Great Works LLC is entirely funded with Juniper Ridge Landfill (JRL) money that Old Town gets from Casella, the landfill’s operator. Currently, UMaine and Casella are negotiating a contract for Casella to sell landfill gas from JRL to the university. So we do not think it is much of a stretch to see a connection.
Since 2003 when JRL was created, Casella has applied for and been granted numerous licenses to bring more waste of more kinds — including much of it generated outside of Maine — to JRL. These new licenses have greatly expanded the original legally allowed waste streams. In June, Casella was granted approval to bring treated biomedical waste, at least 65 percent of it of non-Maine origin, to JRL.
Casella’s request for a huge expansion of JRL is “in the pipeline.” Juniper Ridge is already the highest point in Old Town. It is already larger than Pine Tree Landfill that we all can see from I-95 in Hampden. Casella wants to expand JRL to at least four times its current size. What will feed the landfill when it is turned into a gas production facility? How, where and by whom will the gas be cleaned to collect the useful methane fraction and removed toxic contaminants?
The university’s involvement is with Casella and its projects is a bad choice. The landfill gas project will provide an incentive to bring as much trash as possible as quickly as possible to JRL, providing a new incentive for the expansion and its increased hazards not far from the UMaine campus. I believe that Kennedy’s involvement with a Casella-funded economic development board is problematic. I would like to see the university hold a public information meeting to update the UMaine community on the pipeline project and its negotiations with Casella as well as Kennedy’s membership on the Great Works LLC.
Chuck Leithiser and Edward Spencer, Old Town residents
Bangor Daily News