After state officials ordered last year that a dormant Bucksport landfill be permanently closed, they have now backed off that order and are giving the owners more time to look into other options.
That’s frustrated some local residents and officials, who opposed a recent effort to reopen the landfill and would like to see it closed down for good, in part because it no longer serves the town’s former paper mill, which had owned it, and also because of contamination from the buried waste.
The landfill now belongs to American Iron and Metal, the scrap metal recycler that bought the shuttered paper mill in 2014. However, AIM sold off the rest of the mill property within the next six years, and that means it can no longer use the landfill under the terms of its license.
As a result, state environmental officials notified AIM last summer that it must submit a closure plan for the landfill by Jan. 1 of this year and complete the work in 2026.
But that has now changed.
On Feb. 13, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection notified Bucksport officials that it had agreed to AIM’s request for “additional time to explore options … other than closure.” In the letter, Maine DEP staffer Karen Knuuti said that it was only a “limited” extension and that it was granted based on the “current limitations” of Maine’s landfill capacity.
In response to questions, Maine DEP spokesperson David Madore said that AIM has not shared any plans for selling the landfill, and that it’s “difficult to say” whether the originally targeted closure date of 2026 could be affected by its extension.
A representative for AIM did not respond to a request for information.
Town officials were frustrated by Maine DEP’s change of heart. Town Manager Susan Lessard wrote back that she was “disappointed” that AIM was getting more time to consider its options for the landfill, particularly when the company had “done virtually nothing in regard to its care and maintenance” over the last decade.
Last year, Maine DEP informed AIM that it had to address a number of issues to comply with its landfill license, including providing proof of liability insurance, removal of sediment from a leachate pond and restarting annual inspections of a leachate collection system. The company has also not closed the north slope of the landfill despite the state ordering that work since 2014.
However, Knuuti said in her recent letter that AIM has started to make progress on some of that work.
AIM previously approached the town about partnering to reopen the landfill and share the revenue from wood waste or construction and demolition debris that’s buried there. But residents opposed the idea, and local officials didn’t embrace it either, in part because of the site’s poor condition. It’s largely unlined, meaning leachate can escape into the nearby Penobscot River.
The town has now approved its own permitting process for local landfills in case AIM partners with another entity — such as a municipality or the state — to revive the landfill.
The town “will actively oppose any attempt to re-open this landfill in any capacity,” Lessard wrote in her letter to Maine DEP. “[R]e-activating that landfill in proximity to the river would do nothing but jeopardize our ability to attract residents and businesses to our community and risk further environmental harm.”
