Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions

Solid Waste Management in Maine:
Past, Present and Future

Materials Management Research Group:
Cynthia Isenhour, George Criner, David Hart, Linda Silka,
John Peckenham, Chet Rock, Avinash Rude, and Travis Blackmer

Senator George J. Mitchell
Center for Sustainability Solutions

Executive Summary
The Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions at the University of Maine has organized an interdisciplinary team of researchers with a wide array of expertise related to solid waste. Together we seek to engage with stakeholders throughout the state to identify and alleviate information gaps, provide opportunities for dialogue and to participate in the process of designing and building support for sustainable solid waste (materials management) solutions in Maine. This paper draws upon the team’s collective expertise in order to: 1) provide a brief overview of the history of solid waste in Maine; 2) outline contemporary challenges; and 3) to identify opportunities for the future. While many readers will likely have more complete knowledge of solid waste management in Maine, our hope is that this document can serve as a starting point, a place where stakeholders – citizens, municipal managers, legislators, regulators, landfill operators, waste-to-energy operators, haulers, recyclers, composters, and other vital partners – can provide feedback, help to clarify and assist in reviewing the current state of our system. Our goal is to utilize collective input to identify areas of strength and to create proposals to achieve more success in a sustainable materials management system.

We invite readers to review and comment on the full report. A summary of highlights include:

• Waste generation, management and disposal is an extremely complex issue, in part because it is intricately linked to a wide variety of economic, social and environmental issues affecting our state including public service provision, municipal and state budgets, private industry, ecological and human health, land use, and resident satisfaction with service, facility siting and operations.

• There have been vast improvements in waste management services and programs since World War II, but as a result solid waste issues have been removed from public consciousness and suffered a lack of public investment in and engagement with waste issues – except in times of crisis.

• The history of waste management in Maine can be characterized as a series of periodic crises. While we have made some significant advancement, the need to respond quickly has often pre-empted or precluded long term planning for more efficient and sustainable waste management systems.

• Well-designed materials management programs (solid waste processing and disposal, recycling, organics, source reduction, reuse, etc.), citizen conscientiousness, capital investments, and innovative institutions can all contribute to the achievement of the waste hierarchy and reducing the amount of waste generated and disposed of.

• Every day, over 5000 tons of municipal solid waste are generated, collected, and managed (reuse, recycled, composted, disposed) in Maine; involving a network of varying public and private operations and services.

• Today we find ourselves closer to another “crisis” as we need to expand existing and find new homes for our waste. Meanwhile pressure is mounting to send in more waste from other states that are imposing landfill bans that limit their options.

• The future of Waste-to-Energy in Maine is unclear with one facility closed (MERC) and one with an uncertain future (PERC). WTE facilities reduce waste volume, produce electricity, and are supported by the State’s waste hierarchy.

• All management strategies have trades offs – processes have different costs, environmental impacts, and lifetimes. How the state and public should evaluate these trade-offs is not clear.

• Landfill space is a precious resource due to limited acceptable sites and public resistance to landfills. Increased public engagement in waste issues, due to current debates about landfill capacity and continued reliance upon WTE facilities, presents a significant opportunity to proactively design and invest in more sustainable materials management systems in our state.

• All communities are different and there are reasons to have some variability across the state. However, modern waste management technologies (recycling facilities, landfills, waste-to-energy plants) favor large facilities. To achieve reasonable per ton costs, more regionals solutions are likely favorable. Further, inclusive and integrated planning could reduce costs, ensure more equitable investment and improve the state economy.

• Maine can look within the state as well as to other states for programs, policies, and information that successfully diverted waste and captured valuable materials.

• Maine has taken a leadership role in waste management issues in the past and can draw upon our deep culture of “waste not” ingenuity once again to design an exemplary and sustainable system.

• Finding areas to improve on current solid waste management practices will require engaging the many groups of stakeholders and looking inside and outside the state for solutions.

I. Introduction: An Opportunity to Rethink “Waste”

Waste is a curious thing. We all generate it – paper, tissues, product packaging, demolition debris and carrot tops. Indeed, in today’s consumer society many of our most basic necessities are wrapped, boxed or bagged. As our population has grown, so has the volume of waste produced. To accommodate this growth our disposal approach has changed from ‘dilute and disperse’ to ‘concentrate and contain.’ This system has clear sanitary and aesthetic advantages but it also has the negative effect of removing the compounding costs of waste and the complicated issues associated with its management from the public eye and consciousness.

We acknowledge that while citizens do not want landfills near their homes, as a general rule people are happy to go on living their daily routines and don’t often prioritize public investment in waste management. Yet a growing number of citizens, waste managers and policy makers recognize that our contemporary systems allow valuable resources to be wasted and thus are not optimally efficient. In today’s system, natural resources are harvested, cut, mined, manufactured, distributed, sold, consumed and wasted. Even goods with significant value come to the end of a one-way, linear system of production, consumption and waste. This problem is particularly pronounced in the US where approximately 5% of the global population consumes 25% of the world’s resources (Figure 1) and sends many of those resources to landfills.

Figure 1: Materials Consumption in the US by Sector of Origin, 1975-2000 Source: WRI Materials Flows Database 2005

Our municipal governments are legally responsible for managing solid waste (M.R.S. Title 38 Chapter 13 §1305), but it is an expensive burden. Waste experts estimate that waste management expenditures in Maine typically rank between the third and fifth highest category on municipal budgets. Programs designed to reduce waste and capture a higher percentage of valuable resources before sending them to disposal could significantly supplement municipal budgets if alternatives can be utilized at lower costs than disposal. At the same time tight municipal budgets may translate into a strong local preference to allocate as little money as is possible to waste management. This cost aversion certainly makes sense and recent municipal surveys suggest that the overwhelming majority of municipalities are satisfied with their current waste management system and prefer not to allocate additional funding. But periodically crises arise that threaten the status quo (e.g. leaking or full landfills, expiring electrical sale rate agreements to waste-energy facilities; public resistance toward landfill expansion). Deferring decisions and investment may make economic sense in the short term, but is less sense in the long term considering the implications of our current system for long-term environmental and public health, the inefficiency of wasting valuable resources and the costs that compound when long -term planning is neglected.

History repeats itself when it comes to the management of municipal solid waste (MSW), both in Maine and beyond. Most big changes to how we manage our waste have come when the status quo is no longer tenable, through progressive regulatory changes and groundswells of public reaction. For example, ocean dumping was once prevalent but was banned after debris began fouling the shore, and in some cases became a navigational hazard. Ocean dumping of sludge was also abandoned after studies showed that the sludge was negatively altering our coastal ecosystems, one of Maine’s greatest resources. At least with respect to MSW management in the US, change often proceeds as follows: 1) status quo; 2) one or more problems cannot be denied and citizens become engaged; 3) regulators create a deadline for change; 4) the deadline arrives and a crisis is declared; 5) there is a scramble for solutions but the short time frame means they are often incomplete; 6) a solution is put in place that works for the short term.

Today in Maine we’re confronted with yet another moment in history when the symptoms of an unsustainable system have risen to a more prominent place in public consciousness. It is a moment when we must decide whether to continue to “manage waste” or to draw upon our strong history of environmental leadership, “waste-not” culture and unique version of entrepreneurialism to design solutions that eliminate waste, capitalize on valuable materials, and spur economic development. This is an opportunity for us all to educate and engage each other to create a more sustainable system.

II. A History of Waste Management in Maine

We begin with a brief history of waste management in Maine. The saying “history repeats itself” rings true in relation to solid waste. Indeed our history is characterized by a cycle of intermittent crises, partial solutions and periods of complacency.

After World War II, many municipalities began covering their open dumps with soil (daily cover). This practice put an end to the nuisance factor of town dumps (reduced fires, and animal issues such as seagulls and rats) (Daniel 1993). For decades there were several waste crises and concerns about garbage volume, water pollution and toxicity as environmental awareness increased. During the 1960s and 1970s various recycling programs were started including the first bottle deposit legislation in the US. During the 1980s, concern mounted over the continued use of unlined landfills in many municipalities. Due to changes in the composition of waste, landfills were becoming increasingly complex and toxic.

Traditional dumps did not have engineering features to prevent groundwater contamination. In response, the US EPA enacted the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act in 1976. The Act set a deadline for the closure of inadequate and unsanitary landfills and put in place strict engineering requirements for all new facilities. While a significant step forward to prevent pollution and including a focus on source reduction and resource recovery, the act created a crisis of sorts at state and local levels as municipalities began searching for new homes for their MSW.

The resulting wave of activity in Maine included construction of sanitary landfills designed to meet EPA engineering requirements, the construction of several of waste-to-energy (WTE) facilities and the start of recycling programs. The Mid-Maine Waste Action Corporation (MMWAC) was formed in 1986 and completed refurbishing their facility in Auburn in 1992, the Maine Energy Recovery Company (MERC) built a WTE plant in Biddeford in 1987, ecomaine, originally Regional Waste Systems, built a WTE plant in Portland in 1988, and the Penobscot Energy Recovery Company (PERC) built one in Orrington of the same year. In 1989 Maine created the Maine Waste Management Agency and charged it with creating a solid waste management plan, assisting municipalities and businesses in waste reduction and recycling efforts, and developing criteria for the selection of new landfills. Perhaps most importantly, the state established a recycling goal of 50 percent, developed various assistance programs including an infrastructure grant program and educational efforts, and adopted a waste management hierarchy (38 MRSA §2101) which prioritized efforts to ensure waste reduction before recycling, waste-to-energy and landfilling (in that order).

In an effort to support the hierarchy, Maine emerged as a national leader in product stewardship programs and was among the first to implement stewardship requirements for mercury and batteries. The state also provided assistance to municipalities to improve recycling and materials recovery rates. Combined with waste to energy programs, these efforts contributed to reductions in waste production and landfilling rates. Disposal of waste to a landfill has decreased from 89 percent of total waste in 1980 to less than 54 percent of MSW in 2012. Solid waste generation per person per day peaked in 2000 in the US and the recycling rate has increased–from less than 10 percent of MSW generated in 1980 to over 34 percent in 2012 (Figures 2,3,4, & 5).

Today, most Maine communities do have more organized household collection with increases in the amount of curbside collection of waste and recycling, but recycling rates have stagnated and little additional progress has been made in meeting Maine’s recycling goal of 50% (Figure 2). Indeed, Maine has struggled to find new ways to improve solid waste management practices since the mid-1990s and many argue that the waste hierarchy is not being adequately supported with policy or investment. Seeing slow progress towards the 50% recycling goal, stakeholders have increasingly questioned whether or not it is the right goal, or if significant changes must be made to overcome the barriers that are preventing its accomplishment. This is in contrast to national trends showing stabilized waste production rates per capita. This can be seen as a plateau of total waste generation along with increasing recycling rates at the national level (Figure 4, 5).

Figure 2: Maine’s Recycling Rate 1993-2009

Figure 3: Maine’s Solid Waste Disposed of VS. Recycling 1993-2009
Source: State Planning Office Solid Waste Generation & Disposal Capacity Report for Calendar Year 2009

Figure 4: MSW generation rates, 1960 to 2012

Figure 5 MSW Recycling Rate, 1960 to 2012
Source: USEPA Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in the United States:
Facts and Figures for 2012

Complicating planning for the waste hierarchy at the state level, the two state agencies which have helped to set goals for solid waste management have both been eliminated. The Maine Waste Management Agency Act was repealed in 1995, and the State Planning Office closed in July of 2012. These changes in Maine’s policy and departmental priorities have added considerable uncertainty to the direction of solid waste regulation and planning for the state. The Department of Environmental Protection is now tasked with Solid Waste data collection and reporting, but their role as regulators could impact their ability to direct solid waste planning for the state.

The current era may be coming to an end as history repeats itself and public interest in MSW policy is once again rising, due to an impending crisis and deadline. Maine Energy Recovery Company’s (MERC) WTE facility in Biddeford closed at the end of 2012, taking with it more than one third of the state’s waste WTE capacity. In 2018 the waste-to-energy plant, Penobscot Energy Recovery Company (PERC), will lose favorable, electrical rates for the energy they produce. Together MERC and PERC represented 72% of the state’s waste-to-energy capacity prior to 2012. If PERC were to close, a significant increase in landfilling may be necessary in the absence of alternative technologies or aggressive waste reduction programs. Yet increased landfilling is inconsistent with Maine’s waste hierarchy that places waste processing to reduce volume (i.e. WTE and potentially new technologies) at a higher priority level than landfilling.

One of the PERC owners is the Municipal Review Committee (MRC), a nonprofit organization composed of the 187 eastern Maine municipalities that generate much of the waste PERC receives. As part of the MRC effort to identify alternatives for disposal of their MSW post-2018, the organization proposed siting a new landfill at one of two sites in Argyle or Greenbush, Maine. While the State of Maine, through the Maine DEP, would deny both MRC landfill location requests, the proposals sparked significant public protest and brought waste management back into the public consciousness. Meanwhile other municipalities, struggling to find adequate room in their budgets to manage waste, find proposals to subsidize waste-to-energy unfair given that WTE may not be accessible to all municipalities.

The history of MSW management leads us to look at both the challenges and opportunities associated with our current system of waste management and the potentially historical moment in which we find ourselves.

III. Defining Challenges and Opportunities

Meeting the goals of Maine’s waste hierarchy may be difficult without new technologies, renewed support for waste-to-energy, and significant declines in waste generation or policy to restructure landfill incentives. In this section we outline our understanding of the challenges associated with Maine’s current MSW system, including our continued reliance on landfills.

Waste management and the economy
The state of Maine currently owns three landfill sites: Juniper Ridge in Old Town (operated by Casella); Dolby Landfill in East Millinocket; and undeveloped Carpenter Ridge in Lincoln. Maine also has five municipally-owned landfills (Hatch-Hill in Augusta, Bath, Brunswick, Presque Isle, and Tri-Community in Fort-Fairfield), two ash landfills for WTE residue (ecomaine’s and Lewiston), one commercially owned and operated landfill (Crossroads in Norridgewock owned by Waste Management), and two larger waste remediation and Construction and Demolition Debris (CDD) disposal sites (Mid Coast Solid Waste in Rockport and Rockland). As of 2013, the remaining landfill capacity for MSW was 9.4 million cubic yards (Maine DEP 2015). That number could potentially increase if landfill expansion proposals expected in the summer of 2015 are approved and with the legislative rules regarding commercial landfills being changed. If approved and at current disposal rates, these expansionsis would increase the states capacity beyond 20 years, though some landfills would fill sooner. This time frame would be further compressed with the closure of PERC if no agreeable alternatives to direct landfilling are identified.

The siting of new landfills and the expansion of existing sites are difficult due, most obviously, to local opposition to perceived environmental and operational issues, but also to a host of other reasons including geography and economics. For example, large landfills benefit from economies of scale as large amounts of waste can offset the high costs associated with siting and development, construction and operations. It would be prohibitively expensive for all but Maine’s largest municipalities to have individual landfills. But large landfills must be regional in order to obtain sufficient MSW. This is a problem for our largely rural state, however, since geography and infrastructure can make transportation cost-prohibitive for many municipalities if the landfills are far from population centers.

Another economic complication concerns contemporary incentives for landfill operators. To ensure adequate cash flow for operations, landfill operators may have an incentive to secure more volume and to fill at a rapid rate. When analyzing landfill closure timelines, such as with Mid-Coast Solid Waste and the City of Bath’s landfill, the least-cost alternative found was to fill the landfill expediently and close it, but that would not be the appropriate option given the needs of the region they serve. These models were based on many social and economic assumptions. There are other factors such as the ability to have a controllable local landfill that isn’t quantifiable. Landfills also settle over time as methane, carbon-dioxide, and water are released and allow for a cubic yard of waste today to not occupy that same space in the future. In terms of general finance it is also known that a dollar today is worth more than future dollars. These factors increase the complexity of landfill planning and operation.

Waste to energy facilities are, as we all know, another option but these too can only exist if they can compete economically with other means of disposing of waste. Being tied to a volatile energy markets leads to a great deal of uncertainty. Materials recovery facilities have the same risks due to extreme fluctuations in the prices of materials. Corrugated cardboard, for example, reached prices of over $200 a ton in recent history, but has historically averaged closer to $70 a ton.
Recycling and capturing materials are important strategies for waste diversion; they also come with a price. Transporting two streams can be costly in rural areas where there are lower volumes. Composting facilities have perceptions of odor that make it difficult to gain community support. Larger facilities could be more cost efficient, but guaranteeing adequate materials inflow prior to construction would prove difficult. That type of price fluctuation makes planning difficult for facilities and brokers that sell recovered materials. There are also concerns about the distances materials (waste, recycling, and other) must travel. Many bailed recyclable materials end up in places far away, sometimes across the globe. The local transfer station or recycling center was a hub for the consolidation of materials, but with the number of communities that have curbside recycling and some form of single stream recycling increasing, the road miles of these collected materials has increased. Diversion technologies also require large capital investments that individual communities or regions often cannot afford by themselves. Private companies have an important role to play in this form of regionalization; allowing for coordination between communities and markets at lower costs.

Alternative incentive structures could potentially be created to address these economic challenges, but waste disposal also presents longer term ecological and public health risks.

Waste management and environmental health
Landfills have been a key part of the waste disposal system, but result in several long-term ecological challenges ranging from land allocation and potential engineering failures to leachate treatment and the production of greenhouse gasses. Policy makers have recognized the scarcity of suitable landfill sites, writing “The Legislature finds that environmentally suitable sites for waste disposal are in limited supply and represent a critical natural resource.” (M.R.S. Title 38 Chapter 13 §1302)

Ideal sites for landfills in Maine are limited given the state’s surficial geology and landscape. Some of the better locations, far away from vulnerable water resources, are also far away from population centers making transportation costs an issue of concern. Once landfills are approved, with today’s requirements that moisture and air be excluded, waste materials in a landfill slowly decay, producing gasses and leachate that may be released into our air and water. Air emissions from landfills primarily consist of Carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, malodorous compounds, and other organic compounds (US EPA 1995) which contribute to air quality problems. Impacts of landfill leachate include the pollution of ground and surface waters and the energy and chemicals associated with treating collected leachate.

These risks are present even for new landfills constructed to modern standards using best engineering practices. Landfills present legacy problems for the state and its citizenry. Already approximately 12% of the closed municipal landfills in Maine have been identified as environment risks as defined by the Maine DEP. Even modern engineered landfills must be monitored over the long-term to safeguard human health and the environment. The US EPA requires that the care period for Municipal Solid Waste Landfills for non-hazardous wastes be 30 years post-closure (US EPA 2014) but Dr. G. Fred Lee and associates, a landfill engineering and environmental consulting group, states that a 30 year post-closure period “has essentially no relationship to the period during which the wastes in the landfill will pose a threat to public health/welfare or environmental quality.” (Jones-Lee & Lee 2014).

Waste-to-energy also has environmental impacts. While many mechanisms and technologies have been put in place to ensure emissions meet regulated air quality levels and to detoxify ash, particularly since the Clean Air Act of 1970, there are still emissions. Many communities object to the odors associated with some WTE facilities and the extra layer of processing also requires significant transportation and ash disposal.

Challenges and Opportunities at (and in) the Home
Landfill and WTE operators provide an essential service for the benefit of a citizenry that produces significant waste (approximately 3 pounds per-person-per-day in Maine). While it is true that both absolute and per capita waste generation has declined in Maine over the last decade, it is also clear that even these reduced levels of waste generation will require new solutions (Maine DEP 2013). While the best solutions will include a mix of these elements and a strong systemic approach, research suggests that the most economic and resource efficient solutions (the low-hanging fruit, so to speak) are found not at the end of the lifecycle, but rather up the supply chain in design modifications or in consumer behavioral modifications (West Coast Forum on Materials Management).

A 2011 study by the University of Maine and State Planning Office (Criner & Blackmer 2011) found that 20% of baggable household waste (after recycling) gathered from 17 municipalities in Maine was recyclable, and more notably, that 40% was compostable. This raises significant questions about waste that might be avoided through the encouragement of changes in household behaviors (meal planning, re-evaluation of “best by” dates, food sharing, household composting etc.). The elimination of food waste and composting keeps valuable nutrients circulating and reduces waste tonnages and landfill-associated emissions. According to several studies, waste prevention and food waste composting offer the greatest potential for waste reduction (West Coast Forum 2014, Cox et al. 2010).

Information and (dis)incentives can often times be effective, but researchers have long noted a gap between environmental awareness, attitudes and behaviors (Thorgeson and Olander 2003). In order to increase household participation in waste reduction these practices must also be convenient (Mueller 2013, Wilk 2009). Municipalities have also recognized the need for convenience, leading to a vast increase in communities using curbside recycling and either single-stream or zero-sort™ for recycling. While single stream can have significant benefits, it can also increase the distances that materials are transported and can break down local community and regional efforts. The significant investment required for single stream materials recovery facilities mean that they are often centralized in urban centers.

Another alternative designed to reduce household waste is Pay-As-You-Throw (PAYT). These programs have also grown in popularity in recent years. In 2006, the EPA reported that there are over 7,000 communities in the US with PAYT (Skumatz 2006). PAYT programs may be perceived as controversial and often fought by citizens. The research on PAYT is mixed, with some reporting significant waste reduction near 50% (EPA 2010, individual municipalities; Brewer, Sanford). Other researchers finding that while there are substantial impacts, they are not only due to PAYT, but also are due to other important factors such as: demographics; available programs; current economic conditions; etc. (Blackmer & Criner 2014; Allers 2010, Ferrera 2005). Finally some studies suggest that reductions in waste from PAYT may be small and heavily undermined by illegal dumping, waste “shi