The town of Wiscasset has ramped up its efforts to collect more tax revenue from the decommissioned Maine Yankee nuclear plant after a decision last year by state environmental officials exempted the facility from paying some of its taxes.
After challenging the exemption in court late last year, the town is now making a separate push for legislation that would specifically bar Maine Yankee from using the tax incentive that’s meant for facilities that control air pollution.
While both sides have presented technical arguments for why storing old nuclear fuel rods should or shouldn’t count as controlling air pollution, what’s most immediately at stake in the debate is $1.6 million: Wicasset wants that amount back on its tax rolls, while Maine Yankee says it needs those funds to safely manage its nuclear storage site.
“If this exemption is allowed to stand, it will be the second time that the Town has been hit with a major revenue loss from the same property,” Town Manager Dennis Simmons said in testimony for the legislation. “The first being when Maine Yankee was decommissioned.”
Like many other states, Maine first exempted air pollution controlling equipment from local taxes decades ago, with the goal of encouraging industries to curb the emissions spewing out of their facilities.
After Maine Yankee filed for its exemption late in 2022, it was granted in March of last year and — following an initial challenge by the town — upheld in late October by the state Board of Environmental Protection. The company argues that the radionuclides from the fuel rods stored at its Wiscasset facility — inside a highly-engineered complex of 64 stainless steel canisters — count as air pollution.
In its legal and legislative challenges, Wiscasset has pushed back on that claim, arguing that Maine Yankee is not mitigating air pollution, but rather containing energy.
It’s now backing L.D. 2027, a bill sponsored by a bipartisan group of midcoast lawmakers that would bar facilities with spent nuclear fuel or radioactive waste from getting the tax exemption meant for equipment that reduces air pollution.
“While the radiation emitted from the continued decaying of the spent fuel is harmful, radiation is not air pollution,” Simmons said in testimony for the new bill.
Beyond those competing definitions of air pollution, both sides also disagree on the more fundamental question of which one deserves the $1.6 million that Maine Yankee is now exempt from paying the town each year.
According to Simmons, that amount would cover the entire annual cost of the town’s emergency services and police department. Moreover, the town is pursuing a $1.9 million project to replace a failing stream culvert on the only access road to Maine Yankee — a project that almost doubled in cost because of the need to build a temporary bridge ensuring 24-hour access to the site.
In his testimony, Simmons also noted that Maine Yankee is reimbursed by the federal government for reasonable costs, including its property taxes, as the feds continue to look for another location where its spent fuel can be moved.
But Maine Yankee argues that it might not be able to recoup all its costs from the feds in the future, and that it must also pass higher costs onto Maine’s electric customers, who pay into a fund that supports Maine Yankee’s operations.
“Although Maine Yankee has historically recovered a significant portion of its incurred costs [from the federal government], continued recoveries are not guaranteed,” said Jim Mitchell, a representative for Maine Yankee, in testimony opposing the new legislation.
Mitchell also asserted that the company wants to pay reasonable local taxes, but that the town recently over-assessed the portion of its property that’s not under the exemption, resulting in a tax bill of $1.5 million. That number would double if Maine Yankee loses its tax exemption, Mitchell said.
BDN editor Charles Eichacker contributed reporting.
