After a new company took over the Orrington trash incinerator in an effort to finally restart it, Penobscot County pledged $650,000 to help manage the tons of waste still in the plant.
The Eagle Point Energy Center bought the plant Friday, Orrington Town Manager Chris Backman said Tuesday at a Penobscot County Commission meeting. The plant, formerly known as Penobscot Energy Recovery Co., foreclosed in May and stopped accepting trash from Orrington in September.
Nearly 8,000 tons of trash remain inside the facility, which started burning trash in the 1980s. Bringing the trash to Juniper Ridge landfill will cost nearly $1 million, Backman said. Instead of spending money on that, the plant will buy a trash baler system to compact the waste, he said.
“There’s still a very hazardous health issue sitting on the floor,” Backman said.
The system will cost about $950,000, Commissioner Dave Marshall said. Commissioners voted to spend the last $650,000 of the county’s federal money from the American Rescue Plan Act, because they said they have confidence in Eagle Point Energy Center and Orrington.
“It’s a very sound capital investment,” Marshall said. “This is fiduciary responsibility at its best.”
The baler, which will be owned by Orrington, should be installed in May, and it will take about a month to compact all the trash, company representative Evan Coleman said at the meeting. Trash will be compacted to about a fifth of its size, allowing the incinerator to store it in a safe manner and use it once operations restart, Backman said.
Cleaning up the trash will create space for the major repairs to happen, Penobscot County said in a news release.
There were 11 people laid off Friday, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification. The Maine Department of Labor confirmed the layoffs but could not confirm how many people were affected.
The plant furloughed 31 people in September and planned to bring them back in early October. It’s unknown if those employees returned to work. There were 55 people employed as of June.
The Eagle Point Energy Center was not immediately available for comment. The longtime plant manager is no longer employed at the plant and was unable to answer questions Wednesday.
At the third auction for the plant in November, C&M Faith Holdings bought it. The company said it had an eight-week plan to restart operations but failed to do so. Orrington worked to find a new owner, Backman said at the meeting.
The company’s goal is to start processing trash in early 2025, Backman said. The 44 towns and communities that used the incinerator are taking their trash to Juniper Ridge landfill.
The 40-acre facility located off of River Road, also known as Route 15, burned trash to make electricity, and the facility burned 315,000 tons of trash in 2017, its last year of full operations.
