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Police officers from Orono, Old Town and Veazie were on hand in the Black Bear Inn’s parking lot after a turbulent meeting in the Orono hotel’s basement Monday night.
The gathering was termed a “public benefit determination” meeting for the Casella Waste Systems Inc.-operated, state-owned Juniper Ridge Landfill’s request to increase the amount of waste it can accept. The landfill crosses the Old Town-Alton town line and the expansion would approximately triple its size.
Juniper Ridge is permitted for 10 million cubic yards of material. The proposal would increase that capacity to approximately 32 million cubic yards.
“There’s people from all over the state here to tell you we don’t want you here,” said Jennifer Rose of Portland. “I’ve only seen you people at the desk [from Casella and state agencies] arguing on your own side. Maybe you should come back when you have friends.”
“We came through the parking lot at one point and people in the parking lot expressed concern at how rowdy the crowd was getting downstairs,” said Orono police Sgt. Scott Wilcox.
Wilcox called for assistance from Old Town and Veazie when he heard the crowd was estimated at 200 people; however, their presence was precautionary, and the officers did not interfere with the meeting.
While the meeting reached a peaceful conclusion, the crowd of 200 was aggressive in voicing dissent.
Ralph Coffman of Old Town approached the podium wearing a hand-drawn “Audit the Dump” T-shirt. He proudly held the edges of his jacket apart to show it to the audience before speaking for his allotted four minutes — and then some.
“My dream has been to have a campground. We purchased 21 acres,” including waterfront property, he said. He planned to build the campground emulating Henry David Thoreau’s experience in the Maine wilderness.
“But now I can’t even sell my property. I have to refund someone my money because he heard about what’s going on up in Old Town,” he said, his voice rising with emotion shortly before he exceeded his four minutes.
“You’re going to take that stuff [in Juniper Ridge] and you’re going to move it out of here one way or another,” Coffman yelled toward the panel after the moderator, Malcolm Burson of the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, turned off the microphone and gestured for Coffman to leave the podium.
“You need to find a new place for this s—t,” Coffman added on his way back to his seat, nearly drowned out by the cheering audience.
Among others, the panel included Patricia Aho, commissioner of the MDEP; Don Meagher, manager for planning and development for Casella; Darryl Brown, director of the State Planning Office; and Tom Doyle, attorney for Pierce Atwood, the Portland-based firm that represents Casella
The panel did not respond to Coffman.
“This is not a public hearing,” Burson reminded the audience before presentations began, adding that he would remove from the room any audience member who did not adhere to the purpose of the meeting.
The audience, which spoke from 7:15 to 9:20 p.m., was instructed to keep its questions in line with three statutes that related to the proposed expansion. The landfill expansion must:
- be in line with Maine’s needs for landfill space
- not violate the state’s waste management and recycling plan
- be in line with current collection, storage, transportation or disposal of waste
Multiple audience members expressed frustration at Burson’s frequent reminders to limit their questions or comments to those criteria.
“How do I know whether my questions are relevant? Because I have no idea what any waste transportation rules are,” asked Claire Ackroyd of Orono. “You’re asking us to be concerned about the impact this might have on other landfills rather than ourselves.”
Elizabeth Worden of Old Town told the panel she was puzzled that the members were not allowed to hear personal stories about the effect of Juniper Ridge on local residents.
“Since the expansion of Juniper Ridge Landfill in about 2005, I have had to buy all the water my family drank, cooked with, et cetera, because our well developed an arsenic problem,” she said.
“It would seem to me that poisoning my well would have something to do with that,” she continued, referring to the three criteria.
Paula Clark of the MDEP’s solid waste management division told Worden that environmental issues would be addressed if the application proceeded past the public benefit determination stage. One audience member jumped from his chair, demanding that Worden’s experiences be taken into account and refusing to sit when told to by Burson.
“I could,” he responded, ultimately taking his seat again, “but it wouldn’t be doing the country any justice.”
Taylor Greene, a first-year University of Maine student who has not declared a major, also addressed the panel.
“I love Maine,” he said. “I’m originally from Los Angeles, and it’s nasty there. This to me just looks like a giant corporate movement.
“People on campus had no idea about this [meeting],” Greene added. He said that once he found out about the meeting, he spent an hour gauging student opinion about the proposed expansion and gathered 90 signatures of those who oppose it.
“It just seems like a rat hole into our land and our system,” he said.
Ellie Barker, a senior new media student at UMaine who moved to the state from Pennsylvania when she was in high school, described concerns similar to Greene’s.
Two members of the Maine State Legislature spoke at the meeting: Rep. Bob Duchesne, a Democrat who represents Alton among other communities, and Rep. Jim Dill, a Democrat who represents Old Town and Indian Island.
“The public benefit determination is going to be based on flawed data,” Duchesne told the panel. “We have a disconnect with the state plan, and that has to be addressed before we can make this public benefit determination.
“We’re actually doing a better job recycling Massachusetts’ waste than our own,” he continued.
Reached on Tuesday, Duchesne said Juniper Ridge Landfill has been his No. 1 issue since being elected. While he has spoken with constituents about the landfill, he said his past efforts with the public benefit determination process led him to attend the meeting.
“Nobody had to ask me [to go],” he said. “What I think the state needed to see most of all was that people are really mad, and I think that came across very well.”
Dill echoed Duchesne’s call for a re-evaluation of the application process, going so far as recommending Casella’s application for expansion be returned to the company to address the issue of out-of-state waste entering Maine through KTI Biofuels of Lewiston, a Casella subsidiary, and being processed to become in-state waste.
Dill also planned to attend the meeting before hearing from concerned constituents.
“I think the message went loud and clear to the DEP, at least this time: The landfill doesn’t need to be expanded until a lot of questions have been answered,” Dill said Wednesday.
Charles Leithiser of Old Town described the distinction between in- and out-of-state waste at KTI as he saw it, calling it “a great example of trash laundering.”
“This waste only switches from one truck to another but indeed becomes in-state waste when it switches trucks,” he said.
Multiple residents of Hampden, home to Casella’s now-closed Pine Tree Landfill, used their four minutes to draw corollaries between their experiences and what they see unfolding at Juniper Ridge.
“You let down my children,” said Carmen Montes of Hampden, mother of three.
“[Casella] gave us ‘shut-up’ money and paid our taxes,” she said, adding, “We went through years of listening to lies.
“These people should be concerned,” Montes continued, gesturing toward the audience, “because when my children, a few years down the road, have illnesses, cancers…you’re going to be gone.”
Marie Lusth-Winn of Orono also invoked a child; hers, however, is grown and has left Maine.
Lusth-Winn described her daughter’s move to Massachusetts for college and eventual decision to make a home there. The home she had chosen had an asbestos-filled basement that cost $16,000 to clean.
Lusth-Winn said her daughter approached the driver of the truck laden with asbestos after her basement was cleaned and asked where he was headed.
“‘You don’t have to worry about this,’” Lusth-Winn said, quoting the driver. “‘It’s going to Maine.’”
