That statement was not meant to start an argument — it is definitive. Whether or not they think they’re too cool to admit it, everybody has some sort of interest in the game or the events that surround it.

Some people tuned in to NBC yesterday to watch the game. There were plenty of story lines to draw viewers — the Patriots and Giants faced on against each other in the Super Bowl in 2008; Patriots’ tight end Rob Gronkowski’s physical readiness was questionable; a win for Giants quarterback Eli Manning would bring more competition to the battle for supremacy with his older brother, Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning.

Some watched for the halftime show. Madonna is one of the bigger names to grace the Super Bowl stage, and her roster of guest performers, including Nicki Minaj, M.I.A., LMFAO and Cee Lo Green raised interest in the performance.

Some watched to see the commercials. Those people didn’t get too much out of the experience. This Super Bowl was easily one of the weakest ad-wise in my lifetime. There was not one memorable commercial in the entire game, as most of the people tweeting with the hashtag #SBCommercials during the game.

Speaking of which, as expected, the big game blew up the Internet.

As much as our parents hate us for it, we live a good portion of our lives online. Specifically, on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

We all know the drill on Facebook for big cultural events — there are three main types of statuses for those occasions.

First, there’s the standard “I am watching this event and enjoying it.”

Second, there are the statuses by people who think they are cool, cultural gods for intentionally knowing very little about the event.

Lastly, there are the witty among us who write, “Oh, is this event happening? Thanks for writing statuses about it, everybody, or else I would have had no idea.”

Facebook isn’t where to go to see what the nation is talking about, though — just your friends, high school classmates and totally real supermodels who added you.

No, Twitter is the place to go.

Twitter has long been a source for news and entertainment. Journalists are able to break news as soon as it happens and everybody else can share their opinion with the world instantly.

Everybody from comedians to politicians to UMaine athletes had something to say about the big game.

Senior women’s field hockey co-captain Kelly Newton tweeted, “excited for the #SuperbowlSunday festivities to commence #weshouldnothaveschooltomorrow” and freshman Andrew Cerretani, a freshman forward on the men’s hockey team, tweeted, “Getting jacked up to watch the #Superbowl #bradyshow #gronknation.”

For a day, the NFL owned the Internet. As early as 10:15 a.m. on Sunday, Happy Super Bowl Sunday was a trending topic on Twitter in the United States.

Early Twitter stats gave interesting insight to the nations opinion of the game. At 10:15, of the trending locations in the U.S., seven — Boston, New York, Detroit, Miami, Philadelphia, Providence, Washington — had trending topics related to the Patriots, and five areas — Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Baltimore, Tampa — were talking about the Giants.

An interesting coincidence: Super Bowl XLVI was the Patriots’ seventh Super Bowl appearance and the Giants’ fifth. Take that information and interpret it however you may.

While not completely taken over by the Super Bowl in the afternoon, Twitter was alive with football talk.

By 11:30 a.m., many were talking about ESPN anchors’ picks for the game with the trending hashtag #ESPNSBPredictions.

At 1:30 p.m., #BetterHalftimeShows was trending, with hilarious tweets like @mattytalks’ “Kanye West showing all his favorite tumblrs and things he pinned on pinterest on the Jumbotron,” and “Tebow crucified at the 50 yard line, the NFL commissioner asks the crowd who to pardon, they scream “Michael Vick ” #BetterHalftimeShows” from @ThatWeissGuy.

The “Twitterverse” spent the rest of the afternoon talking about Madonna, various players involved in the game and Nick Cannon’s face time during pre-game coverage. Cannon got a lot of negative reactions.

“The Nick Cannon interview with Danny DeVito should have been sponsored by cyanide,” tweeted @richarddeitsch.

By the time 6:08 p.m. world around, the world announced it was ready to watch the game by making the phrase “Almost Game Time” a trending Twitter topic.

Kelly Clarkson’s powerful singing of the national anthem made her a trending topic at 6:28 p.m., mere minutes after she finished her performance. The speed and volume with which Twitter users reacted to everything about the game was astounding, this being the first prime example.

Not long after that, the Super Bowl began its official takeover of Twitter. At 6:36 p.m., only six minutes after kickoff, every trending topic in the U.S. was related to the game.

After every modestly important play, a trending topic related to it would emerge, proving that not only is the Super Bowl one of the most watched events on television, but it’s also one of the most discussed online.

Madonna was what made Twitter Super Bowl talks really take off — there were about twice as many tweets during the first half that mentioned “Madonna” than those that mentioned “Patriots TD” and “Giants TD” combined.

Twitter got slightly quieter during the second half, likely because everybody was too busy paying attention to the close game to tweet. When the game came down to the wire, everybody returned to their laptops or cell phones to chronicle the final moments of the game.

The Pats crushed most of our dreams with their heartbreaking loss. I know my brother crushed his hand punching a hole through his bedroom door. That’s the sort of emotional investment we put in our sports teams, a dedication that shone through as the country voiced its passion for a traditional favorite pastime — football — with a new favorite pastime — Twitter.

Anybody on Twitter but not watching the game during the Giants’ and Patriots’ final drives would have still known almost exactly what was happening based solely on the trending topics. 

The trends from the final moments of the game are more narratively powerful and have a greater context than it initially appears. Not only do the trends record the facts of what happened, but they also express the opinions of the nation in a poetic way:

9:38 p.m. – Manningham

9:43 p.m. – Field Goal Range

9:46 p.m. – TD in Super Bowl

9:48 p.m. – Seconds Left

9:50 p.m. – Dropped Passes, Catch The Damn Ball

9:54 p.m. – Tom Brady, Hail Mary, Game Over, #teamgiants

9:55 p.m. – Giants Win

9:59 p.m. – Purple Gatorade, Congrats to the Giants, #SuperBowlChamps

Thanks to the crazy amounts of viewers the NFL’s championship always draws, the halftime show is usually the most watched musical event of the year. That means everybody’s going to have an opinion of it, myself included.

I wrote half of this column before the performance, saying what I thought it was going to be like and what I expected of it, and I wrote the other half right after, to see if my suspicions were confirmed.

Prediction

According to an article from NFL.com, Madonna has partnered with “a creative team from Cirque du Soleil” to help with her performance. She is also rumored to have M.I.A., Nicki Minaj, Cee Lo Green and LMFAO on stage with her.

This year, the NFL went with the strategy that has worked the best for them in the past — getting a long-established act, like Madonna, that is too big to fail. The timelessness of her music and its universal likability should produce a positive audience and critical reaction.

I’m uneasy about how well her guests will contribute to the performance. M.I.A. and Minaj could be a nice contemporary compliment as long as they know their place and try only to bask in the legendary glow of Madonna. If they don’t try to take over the show, which I don’t think they will because I’m assuming they have enough respect to know better, they should be a positive element of the performance.

Green has such a big voice, so I can see some sort of vocal interplay between him and Madonna going over well. If LMFAO does show up, I think that is where halftime could go wrong. I don’t think their brand of pop would mix well with Madonna’s, and to be honest, I find them unbearably annoying.

The association with Cirque du Soleil is also promising, but the quality of the music has to match the visual element. Put last year’s Black Eyed Peas halftime performance on mute and it’s one of the greatest in the history of the event. Bring the audio into the mix and that is no longer the case.

Madonna ought to live up to her reputation as a performer and put on the great show she is capable of. She is far more of a musical consistency than the Black Eyed Peas, so I believe she and her guests will bring their A game and give us something memorable.

Reaction

My biggest fears were confirmed by a terrible Bud Light commercial — LMFAO was part of the performance.

My negative predisposition towards them taints my opinion of their contribution to the performance, so I’ll give them benefit of the doubt and say they didn’t blow their opportunity. Despite their general absurdity, the snippet of “Party Rock Anthem” actually worked well, although ’80s kids must have died inside when they saw Madonna “shufflin’.”

Minaj was also there, but her contribution was completely unnecessary. She held some pom-poms and rapped for about 10 seconds, but her quick pace didn’t match the music and her inclusion seemed like a forced ploy to draw viewers.

Then again, marketing is the reason for all the guests — Madonna is capable of handling a large-scale show like this on her own, I’m sure. The contemporary names were just peppered in to arouse interest in Madonna’s upcoming album that I’m sure you had no idea about until now.

M.I.A.’s performance was as unnecessary as Minaj’s, but it sounded a lot better. Like Minaj, she only had a short rap verse, but it actually flowed with the music and sounded like it belonged.

Green was easily the most effective non-Madonna performer. Like I predicted, he had a short back-and-forth with Madonna, and although he overstayed his welcome by accompanying Madonna as she was lifted on a platform, he wasn’t disruptive to the performance.

Much like her guests, unfortunately, Madonna was also forgettable. Solid and mildly entertaining, but forgettable.

Some of the acrobatics by Madonna’s background dancers were impressive, which is where I’m assuming the Cirque du Soleil influence made itself known, but everything else was pedestrian.

Madonna lacked the gusto needed to make halftime exciting. She looked very much like she was going through the motions, and it looked like she only learned some of the motions yesterday, especially when she almost fell on the bleacher part of her set.

Her songs didn’t sound classic; they sounded old. There was no energy in her singing or “movements” — not enough enthusiasm behind them to call it “dancing” — and the show suffered.

I’m sure everybody there loved the halftime show — plenty of tweets suggested it was a “you had to be there” thing — but I’m willing to bet they won’t remember it for long.

Madonna’s still the Queen of Pop, but that title is now more of a lifetime achievement award than an indication of how good she currently is. Madonna’s getting older, and live, it’s starting to show.

The intimacy of Cohen’s voice, which sounds like it was breathed into the microphone from mere centimeters away, creates a personal aura that makes it easy to connect with the aging singer.

Cohen is a legendary figure, loved for the past five decades for the natural sound of his bare vocals conveying darkly poetic lyrics.

“Old Ideas” is his 12th album, full of wit and wisdom with roots in blues and gospel. All he’s got to put into a song is his own experience.

Decades of desire, regret, suffering, misanthropy, love, hope, and humor shine through in these 10 tracks that will embark you on a journey through some of life’s greatest trials and tribulations, narrated by the old prophet himself.

Cohen isn’t wrapped up in deadlines — death is his only one. Until the darkness takes him, his sunken baritone voice sings along to the beat of life. His lyrics and voice in “Show Me the Place” are raw poetry; the essence revered may bring you to a point at which you start to cry, as in the last whisper to one you hold dear.

In “Going Home,” where humor and tambourine walk hand in hand, Cohen bubbles over with black humor.

“I’d like to speak with Leonard / He’s a sportsman and a shepherd / He’s a lazy bastard living in a suit,” he sings.

It’s a comedic commentary about the person he has become. He “knows he’s really nothing,” yet, his message is bold and beautiful. No costume can disguise this man’s imperfect integrity.

Leonard conveys haunting righteousness with a Yiddish feel in “Amen.” The horns aren’t nearly as spooky as the hurt that spills through the piece. Leonard is no ladies’ man and he certainly doesn’t pretend to be.

“Anyhow” features the same heartbreak, as well as the vibraphone. “I know you had to hate me / But could you hate me less,” Cohen sings.

The confession in this piece is that he’s “crazy to love,” but Cohen is committed to this sort of craziness and “it’s deeper than any goodbye.” This is the type of music that touches your soul with the ache that every heart feels time and again.

“Come Healing” nonchalantly begs for mercy, as in “Anyhow,” and healing overtakes his unfinished longing. This is the most hopeful track on the album. The tone of his voice is almost sincere as he cries out for a Christian redemption.

“Darkness” is my personal favorite from the album. His bad boy bravado stirs up behind what one could only imagine as a smirking face. This piece is similar to Cohen’s earlier guitar work.

Cohen closes the album with “Different Sides,” discussing the possibility of remaining good in this wreck of a world. The song creates a trance-like feel with organ accompaniment as he leaves his feelings alone in the darkness.

Essential tracks to listen to on the album are “Amen,” “Come Healing” and “Darkness.” Cohen’s heartbroken lyrics are a masterpiece that will lull you through the night until you are grinning just as he is.

Grade: B-

If this phrase means nothing to you, it’s about time you rented 1964’s “My Fair Lady,” an iconic musical starring Audrey Hepburn as a lowly Cockney flower girl.

Those who adore Hepburn as the pencil skirt-donning, pastry-nibbling rising socialite in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” may be surprised by her turn as the less-than-refined Eliza Doolittle, but they won’t be disappointed.

As Eliza opens the film by peddling her flowers and avoiding her money-grubbing, alcoholic father, she meets professor Henry Higgins, played by born-and-raised Brit Rex Harrison. Higgins is initially horrified by her lack of social graces and poor elocution, but he soon sees an opportunity for greatness in the unlikeliest of places. Higgins decides to take Eliza in and make her a lady fit for high society, all the while betting on his success in a wager with Col. Hugh Pickering, played by Wilfrid Hyde-White.

When the transformation is complete, Eliza is a class act — so much so that she attracts the attention of handsome young aristocrat Freddy Eynsford-Hill, played by Jeremy Brett. Freddy has fallen hard and croons in an attempt to win her over, but Eliza’s heart belongs to Higgins.

But when the good professor takes all the credit for Eliza’s rise from the streets to the ballroom floor, she leaves him for Freddy. It’s not until Eliza is gone that Higgins realizes the error of his ways, and must put aside his snobbish pride to win her back.

Hepburn is marvelous as the rough, rowdy flower girl turned “loverly” lady. Even with tattered clothes and an obnoxious accent, she shines. Harrison is ideal as the stuck-up Higgins, belting out catchy tunes like “I’m an Ordinary Man” and “The Rain in Spain” that remind of us a time when many actors were multi-dimensional and didn’t reach the heights of fame because of who their parents were.

“My Fair Lady” is a romantic comedy done right. Nineties flicks like “She’s All That” and “10 Things I Hate About You” have attempted to replicate the formula of boy meets girl, boy sees opportunity and seizes it in hurtful bet, girl finds out — but not with a sliver of the success that this classic musical has.

For those who are wary of musicals, don’t let a fear of catchy choruses keep you from witnessing this iconic film. It’s fun and witty when you least expect it, and a few of Eliza’s one-liners will leave you wondering, “Did she just say that?”

The die-hard romantics will find an unrivaled originality and sweetness to the love story between Eliza and Higgins, and anyone who enjoyed 2010’s “The King’s Speech” will draw delightful similarities between voice training scenes.

“My Fair Lady” is based on “Pygmalion: A Romance in Five Acts,” a play by George Bernard Shaw. Higgins’ ultimate idea of Eliza’s overhaul is to pass her off as a duchess at an ambassador’s garden party. But as the story evolves, it becomes clear his heart has gotten in the way of his greedy goal.

Eliza insists throughout the film, “I’m a good girl, I am,” and by the time the credits roll, you’ll have no choice but to believe her.

“The Vagina Monologues” is a play written by Even Ensler, playwright and founder of V-Day, a national movement to end violence against women. The monologues performed are based on more than 200 interviews conducted by Ensler regarding women’s views on sex, relationships and violence against women.

“With humor and grace, the piece celebrates women’s sexuality and strength,” said Karin Baard, a fourth-year English and Spanish student and one of this year’s directors. “The play consists of a series of monologues about these issues from numerous and various perspectives.”

“The Vagina Monologues” is organized and hosted by the Student Women’s Association, or SWA, of the University of Maine. Their sponsors include the Women’s Resource Center, the Safe Campus Project and the women’s studies department.

Also sponsoring the program are various local businesses. “[The businesses] can donate any amount they choose,” said Helen “Sally” Brown, a fourth-year journalism student and another director of the show. “We also include their logo in the program. This is a great event to get the community involved and most seem to really jump at the chance to help.”

Since “The Vagina Monologues” is a benefit performance, these donations help cover the cost of the show, allowing more money to go  to the organizations selected by the show’s participants.

Every year a “spotlight piece” either takes place in or highlights the country where 10 percent of the profits will go. This year, the benefiting country is Haiti.

Along with helping women of Haiti, local organizations will benefit as well, including Mabel Wadsworth Women’s Health Center, Spruce Run and Rape Response Services. To raise the money, the show will cost $6 with a MaineCard and $8 without. Baard made it clear that the SWA does not profit from the show.

“Tickets are available before the show in the lobby and we will be selling them in the Union, along with chocolate vaginas in the days leading up to the performances,” Brown said.

Both Brown and Baard expressed excitement about the show. Brown said the performers decided to work in groups with an individual director for each. Since there are three separate groups, the performers haven’t yet seen the show in its entirety but are confident that it will be great.

Just like the other performers, Brown and Baard both auditioned. This year Brown will read “My Angry Vagina,” a piece that “details all the things that women hate, like doctor visits and tampons.” Baard, on the other hand, will perform “The Flood,” a monologue based on an interview with a 72-year-old woman.

“I’m excited about all of them,” Baard said. “It’s so rewarding to watch these women, who have worked so hard on these monologues, finally bring them in front of an audience.

“Even though all of the monologues are so different, I truly love them all.”

But the Game Boy Advance had many more role-playing games than just the “Final Fantasy” series.

“Advance Wars” and “Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising” offer excellent turn-based strategy, Pokémon games were very well received. These are just the tip of role-playing iceberg.

I would argue the best role-playing game on the Game Boy Advance would be “Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones.”

The “Fire Emblem” series is a turn-based role-playing game, in which you follow a band of traveling mercenaries. Characters level up, can get promoted into different classes, equip weapons and do anything else you’d expect from a role-playing game. While the series has nearly a dozen releases in Japan, only a handful were released in America. “Sacred Stones” was the second to be released in America and is arguably the best.

“Sacred Stones” holds up incredibly well and is just as fun to play today as it was in 2005. “Sacred Stones” was also a part of the Ambassador Program, so if you bought your Nintendo 3DS early and overpriced, start playing “Sacred Stones” now.

The story follows royal twins Eirika and Ephraim on their quest, with the help of the Sacred Stones, to stop an evil empire from taking over the world. The plot develops quickly with a cast of memorable characters. The first few chapters are text-heavy, but this problem is resolved quickly.

The only strange thing about the plot is that, before this empire turned evil, the world had eight centuries of peace. It doesn’t make much sense for everyone to have already had armor and be skilled with weaponry, but I’m probably just over-analyzing it.

The game is comparable to “Advance Wars,” but only in the lightest sense. “Advance Wars” is more about building squads and relying on resources. In “Fire Emblem,” every unit you control is a unique character. If one dies, it is gone for good and may impact the plot.

“Sacred Stones” has characters fight using weapons, magic and more. Certain weapons are effective against others, and magic can bypass defense but has its own weaknesses. Like most Game Boy Advance role-playing games, it’s simple enough for just about anyone to understand, yet it can be incredibly deep if you take details like growth rates into account.

Some of my favorite aspects of this game are the sound and graphics. The game has beautiful sprites for each character, complete with portraits. The battle animations are probably the coolest use of sprites I have ever seen. The audio sounds heroic and is much better than any other Game Boy Advance game I remember.

Battles in “Fire Emblem” take around 40 minutes on average, just a fraction of the estimated 20 hours of gameplay this title provides. The game also has branching paths and enough characters to warrant multiple playthroughs.

“Fire Emblem” is an underrated series. Not enough people play these games and “Sacred Stones,” the easiest game of the series, will definitely prepare you for the other games on the GameCube, Wii, DS and the upcoming 3DS title slated for an April release in Japan.

The film opens up with John Ottway, played by Liam Neeson, on the job, killing wolves at an oil rig deep in the North. Ottway stands in the wilderness with a gun to his face, ready to leave the world, but is stopped by a wolf’s howl in the distance.

Shortly after, Ottoway and a group of fellow oil rig workers load onto an icy plane, homebound for Anchorage, Alaska. Once the plane is in the air, Ottway begins to have flashbacks of a woman he once was with, but quickly returns to reality.

As the passengers relax, the plane begins to shake. After mistakenly passing it off as turbulence, the plane’s computer systems start to malfunction, creating sparks and panic. The plane eventually nosedives at 400 miles per hour toward the ground, leaving few survivors.

The surviving men create a fire using paper and plane wreckage. It isn’t until the group hears the cry of wolves that they realize they may have more than just cold arctic weather to deal with.

The group heads south into the wilderness, having few resources to protect them from the elements and keep them alive. It all boils down to an epic battle between man and nature.

While survival movies don’t always rile up anticipation, “The Grey” does a decent job of making the plot interesting.

Through exquisite use of cinematography, the bleak surroundings of northern Alaska engulf the audience. Whether running from the wolves through 20-foot snowdrifts, climbing trees or crossing a valley on a rope of coats and blankets tied together, the audience feels as if they are right there in the action.

Director and actors alike do a marvelous job creating an atmosphere of authenticity. While struggling to survive in the Alaskan wilderness, the actors create dynamic characters, allowing the audience to see their thoughts and feel their emotions. This is especially important in a film with such a dark storyline. This character development allows the audience to place themselves in the situation.

While this film had great cinematography, toward the beginning, transitions between scenes were choppy as the directors cut from shot to shot very quickly. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there were scenes that seemed excessively long and drawn out.

However, with the exception of a few scenes, most of the film did a great job in pacing and delivery of action.

This movie is an existential tale of survival, posing many philosophical questions including the existence of a deity, whether you would keep going if you knew you were likely to meet your end.

Death continually surrounds Ottway and his colleagues. There are grave situations in this film that aren’t designed for the weak-stomached. Be forewarned: “The Grey” is graphic and violent. If you don’t like seeing humans torn apart by wolves or spewing blood, it most likely won’t suit you.

The end of the movie is frustratingly ambiguous. Some moviegoers prefer a concrete ending, while others prefer an open-ended approach. This film will definitely leave you lying in bed at night wondering what happened and how it all concluded. For those who enjoy being left in suspense, it’s perfect — but for others, it’s a bit of a downfall.

“The Grey” is an excellent example of man versus wild and the will to survive. This film gives insight to the brutality of nature and also the human mind. “The Grey” is sure to leave you feeling contemplative, whether you want to or not.

Grade: B

The move comes as no surprise to system administrators, who have been working with the Streamline and Prioritize Core Government Services Task Force since last summer as part of a larger effort by lawmakers to find greater efficiencies throughout state government.

In all, a $25 million gap was left on the books last year when the legislature approved its $6.1 billion biennial budget for 2012 and 2013. At the time, as Maine found itself slowly emerging from the recession and confronting its lingering effects, lawmakers sought to find greater savings in many aspects of the state budget.

This, according to House Minority Leader Emily Cain, D-Orono, required soliciting cost-saving proposals from various government agencies and service providers, which would then be passed on to the streamlining task force. The task force then recommended cuts based on those proposals.

“This was a budgeted gap, it’s not a shortfall at all,” Cain said. “These cuts are nothing new, and the system knew about them long before it decided to freeze tuition.”

In fact, the task force finalized its work last November, according to Ryan Low, the former chief financial officer at the University of Maine at Farmington, who served as the co-chair of the streamlining committee last summer.

After a public hearing on the cuts on Feb. 1, lawmakers were sure to make clear that the $25 million gap was not related to the $220 million shortfall in the Department of Health and Human Services budget, which has eluded legislators who have been working for months to fill it.

Such confusion raised the question of whether or not the $2.3 million in cuts would in any way affect the tuition freeze approved for 2012-13 by the board of trustees at its last meeting on Jan. 23. 

“When the trustees made their decision to freeze tuition they were well aware of the cuts,” said Low, who began his new role with the system as its executive director of government and external affairs on Jan. 1.

Low said the system worked closely with both the streamlining task force and Gov. Paul LePage’s administration to ensure the cuts would in no way affect students.

“We certainly didn’t advocate for reductions, and the original figure was closer to $5 million in cuts,” Low said. “But the system has worked to spread the cuts out and find a variety of ways to mitigate them.”

Low added that the system’s member campuses were also prepared for the cuts and have long since accounted for them within their 2013 budgets.

“We have been able to minimize the impact of these cuts,” he said. “And many of the things the board of trustees discussed at their last meeting, like finding more efficiencies and examining the size of the system’s administration, were based on the cuts and the work we did with the committee to find them.”

The task force also proposed reducing payments to hospitals to save $3.2 million, eliminating a program for at-risk youths to save $2.2 million, and reducing funding for the Child Development Services Program by $850,000.

“These proposals have met little resistance,” Cain said. “I expect they will be passed this week.”

When asked why higher education always seems to be on the chopping block when it comes time to fill holes in the state budget, Cain said it cannot be easily avoided.

“The University of Maine System receives a lot of money from the state,” she said. “Any time you’re trying to find funding efficiencies or seeking to make reductions it’s hard to keep it off the table.”

Cain estimated that the $2.3 million slated to be cut amounts to around 1 percent of the system’s appropriation from the state.

Meanwhile, officials from Old Town, which receives host benefits from the landfill, haven’t taken a position on the department’s decision.

The Orono Town Council submitted a statement to the MDEP last year against the proposed expansion of Juniper Ridge Landfill, the state-owned, Casella Waste Systems-operated landfill straddling the Old Town-Alton border.

Casella applied last year to expand the landfill by 21 million cubic yards, which would have nearly tripled its current capacity. On Jan. 31, MDEP issued a “partial approval” of Casella’s plan, allowing them to apply for a maximum expansion of 9.35 million cubic yards.

At a November 2011 meeting, the Orono Town Council opposed Casella’s proposed expansion of the landfill, discussing a draft letter saying the council was “very concerned that the proposed expansion highlights operational and management practices that fail to align, both technically and in spirit, with the State’s solid waste hierarchy.”

Maine’s solid waste hierarchy stipulates that landfilling is the method of last resort in dealing with waste. Reducing the amount of waste produced is the state’s priority, followed by reusing, recycling, composting and incinerating.

On Sunday, council chairman Geoffrey Gordon called the possibility of the expansion “an incremental step” toward a larger expansion in the future.

“Fifteen or 20 years from now, we’re going to be talking about the same thing,” Gordon said.

Last week, Don Meagher, Casella’s manager of planning and development, told The Maine Campus because the expansion won’t provide the company enough capacity to fulfill its contract with the state to operate the landfill into 2034, they will have to apply to expand again.

“So really what will have to happen is this expansion application will have to be followed by another,” Meagher said then.

Now, Casella may put in a technical application for the expansion. If they do, there will be time slated for submission of public comments, which Gordon said town officials will likely use to voice opposition. Last year’s letter came during a similar period of time.

Construction and demolition debris constitutes the majority of waste landfilled at Juniper Ridge, and a large proportion of that is routed through Casella subsidiary KTI Bio-fuels Inc. in Lewiston from other states, especially Massachusetts. According to KTI’s 2010 annual report, 85 percent of waste processed there originated in Massachusetts that year, while only 8 percent originated in Maine.

Reached Friday, Sophie Wilson, Orono’s town manager, declined to react to the MDEP’s decision, saying the council hasn’t met to discuss the expansion.

The council will meet next on Feb. 13. Since Orono’s letter opposing the expansion was drafted by the council as a whole, Wilson preferred to wait until the council could similarly draft a response.

“I’m sure people will have some reaction to the determination,” Wilson said.

Similarly, Jamie Dufour, Old Town City Council president, said his council has not met since the decision was announced on Jan. 31. In 2010, former Old Town City Manager Peggy Daigle said the city receives host benefits from the landfill, taking in approximately $1 million each year.

So far, they haven’t weighed in on the expansion. He said Old Town stayed quiet during the period of public comment last fall.

“I don’t think we took a stand one way or another,” he said, denouncing the idea that Old Town would be in favor of the full 21 million-cubic-yard expansion because the anticipation for host benefits would increase.

“Our approach is to make sure that the landfill is appropriately regulated, and it’s really more issues of the quality of operations,” Dufour said. “The fact is it’s there now, and the city hasn’t taken a position on the expansion other than … that it’s planned cautiously.”

Old Town has the Juniper Ridge Landfill Advisory Committee, which was established by the Maine State Legislature in 2004 to act as a mediator between the private entities that run the landfill and the public.

During a September 2011 meeting of the committee, with former State Planning Office Director Darryl Brown and Carlisle McLean, an adviser to Gov. Paul LePage, advisory committee members said they felt powerless and unsure of the effectiveness of their role in relation to Casella.

“As a committee, our hands are completely tied,” committee chairman Peter Dufour said then. “Our authority is unclear, and we need clarification from the state because we cannot make appeals, we cannot challenge permits and we cannot regulate the tons of trash that enter our town every month.”

“We don’t have the ability to influence the outcome of the expansion,” Jamie Dufour said Friday, though he promised the council would be vocal in expressing any concerns that arise as expansion plans move forward. “What we have done historically is to focus on particular issues in the applications like we originally did when it was approved to make sure there aren’t health and safety issues.”

Editor in Chief Michael Shepherd contributed to this report.