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A pipeline project to supply the University of Maine with landfill gas is at least five months behind a 2010 projection.
And according to a top Casella Waste Systems official, there is no specific reason why. There is also no revised timeline to gauge how much longer the team needs to determine a route.
A contract signed by Casella and UMaine in December 2010 said a pipeline route was supposed to be set by April 2011. Construction could tentatively have begun by September.
“That estimate was simply an estimate of how long things would take,” Meagher said of the timeline included in the contract.
But a route for the pipeline from the state-owned, Casella-operated Juniper Ridge Landfill straddling the Old Town-Alton border — a tentative map of which was also in the 2010 contract —still hasn’t been determined.
Without a route, Casella can’t determine a price estimate for the project.
Moreover, the company cannot apply for permits from municipalities the pipeline will run through until specific details about the route are known, and permitting processes can take longer than expected.
“We have very little control over how long it takes from that period on [after submitting permit applications],” Meagher said. “I am always very reluctant to predict ahead of time how long it will take.”
Meagher said there are no added costs to taking more time than outlined in the contract.
Casella intended to fund the project with revenue from natural gas sales, according to Waldron.
Meagher said forward strips for natural gas, prices projected by economic analysts, have been used in negotiations with the university since the fall of 2008. According to Meagher, current natural gas prices have remained “significantly lower than what the strips indicated.”
“One can only use that as a guide to where we think we’re going,” Meagher said. “Nobody has a crystal ball.”
Despite lack of funds, Waldron said the university is continuing negotiations with Casella.
“Because of the low gas markets, we’re renegotiating some of the pricing associated with the project,” she said.
Waldron said she expects to know more by mid-October.
Whatever the final route of the pipeline, it will end at the Steam Plant, where a new boiler was installed this summer in order to accommodate the natural gas. That boiler will need to be upgraded before it is fully functional.
According to a proposal by Babcock & Wilcox Co. dated March 31, 2011, the total anticipated cost to outfit a boiler in the Steam Plant to burn both landfill gas and natural gas was $250,000.
Waldron said the expected savings to the university, despite the delay, are still in the range of $14 million to $15 million.
Agreements about the natural gas pipeline are detailed in Phase One of the contract. Phase Two, which is on hold until Phase One has been completed, outlines the potential construction of a combined heating and power plant in the Hilltop area of campus.
According to the December 2010 contract between UMaine and Casella, the university has the option “to participate in a subsequent project” with Casella in order to build a plant “that would burn substantially all of the Landfill Gas produced at the Landfill to generate steam and electricity for sale.”
“Phase Two is still as it was set forth in the contract and there has been no further discussion associated with that,” Waldron said.
Paul Schroeder, member and cofounder of the Trash Tracking Network in Old Town, is puzzled by how long it is taking for construction on the pipeline to begin.
“It’s really unclear, still, what route they’re talking about,” he said, pointing out that the pipeline must cross through Orono at some point to get to the Steam Plant.
“They haven’t talked to Orono,” he said.
The Trash Tracking Network, a group created “to bring transparency and accountability to the Maine solid waste industry” according to its website, has been a vocal opponent to Casella’s potential expansion of the landfill and to what the group perceives as a lack of transparency in Old Town’s dealings with Casella and the landfill.
Schroeder said he now sees that lack of transparency in the university’s relationship with Casella.
“We’re going into that foggy realm where they have all these contractual obligations, and it’s unclear who will be held to that,” Schroeder said. “The contract is written in pencil for Casella and in pen for everyone else.”
Schroeder said Casella will hold a public meeting in October about a proposed expansion to the Juniper Ridge Landfill from its current limit of 10 million yards of garbage to 30 million yards.
“We have to wonder, ‘Well, what’s the relationship between this huge expansion and the status of wherever the pipeline will be,’” Schroeder said. “If they can get contracts like this in places then they can justify continuous increases in the amount of trash accepted to their landfill.”
Like Meagher, Waldron did not have an idea of how quickly a route for the pipeline could be finalized or how long it would take after that for permits to be granted.
“The intent at this point, and it’s still being discussed, but I think the intent is essentially, at the time, we finalize where we are with the extension here with Casella that everything will just kind of domino forward based on the original timeframe,” Waldron said.
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