The layoffs of 31 people from the Orrington trash incinerator are planned to be temporary.
The employees were furloughed Friday until Sept. 30, plant manager Henry Lang said.
An auction for the foreclosed Penobscot Energy Recovery Co., or PERC, is scheduled for Sept. 27.
The plant ceased operations May 2 but continued accepting trash from Orrington residents until last week, Lang said. The plant is full of trash and does not have room to store more.
It’s been a very stressful time for the workforce as they await news of what will happen, Lang said.
The auction was originally scheduled for July but delayed until August and then again to Sept. 27.
The postponements allowed companies interested in purchasing the property to develop proposals, Lang said. There are six companies interested in fully restarting the plant or changing the way it operates.
It’s unclear if the plant will be bought before the auction as PERC ownership negotiations with companies, Lang said. There have been promising starts but no one has come through with the necessary financing.
“We’re hopeful and anxiously awaiting [answers] but don’t have anything that we could go to the bank with,” Lang said.
Partial operations could resume within a couple weeks of purchase, but returning to full operations will take significantly longer because there are repairs needed. The processing system will likely be reevaluated before both boilers are up and running, Lang said.
Employees have received a lot of community support and everyone really appreciates it, Lang said.
PERC, a 40-acre facility located off of River Road, also known as Route 15, once took trash from 44 communities and commercial waste haulers.
The trash was burned to make electricity, and burned 315,000 tons of trash in 2017, its last full year of operation.
