The town of Wiscasset is going to court to challenge a tax exemption the state granted this year for the infrastructure that holds spent nuclear fuel at the decommissioned Maine Yankee atomic energy plant.
That exemption was first granted last March, under a state law that exempts air pollution controlling facilities from paying local property or real estate taxes. After Wiscasset appealed the exemption, it was upheld in late October by the state Board of Environmental Protection.
Now, in an 8-page petition filed this week in Lincoln County Superior Court, the town is again seeking to reverse the tax exemption. It argues that the highly-engineered 11-acre facility where the nuclear waste is stored — inside 64 stainless steel canisters that are encased in more steel and concrete — is meant to control the radiation from the fuel, not its air emissions.
“The Legislature did not intend a high-level nuclear waste storage facility under the jurisdiction of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission to benefit from the industrial air pollution control tax exemption,” the petition says.
An attorney for the town, Sarah McDaniel, shared a copy of the petition, but was not able to provide a comment.
In previous filings to the Maine Board of Environmental Protection, Maine Yankee has argued that its system does prevent air pollution, because it keeps dangerous radionuclides in the plant’s spent fuel rods from getting into the surrounding air.
Maine Yankee ran its nuclear power plant in Wiscasset from 1972 to 1996. Now, its 550 metric tons of nuclear waste continue to be stored there as the federal government looks for another location where it can be moved. Encroaching sea levels pose another challenge to the radioactive site.
As part of its lawsuit, the town argued that it would lose out on considerable tax revenue because of the tens of millions of dollars that the plant spent on the storage facility.
According to tax records, Maine Yankee owed $1.57 million in real estate and property taxes this year, or about 14 percent of the town’s committed revenue. However, those records show that $93.8 million worth of Maine Yankee real estate — roughly half its total assessment — was exempt from taxes for “air pollution control”
No one from Wiscasset was available to provide more information about the tax impact as the town office was closed on Friday.
