AUGUSTA, Maine — Maine Yankee, the former nuclear plant that has stored waste and fuel since it was decommissioned nearly 20 years ago, would have to fully pay property taxes in Wiscasset under a bill that passed the state Senate on Tuesday.
The 28-6 vote in the Senate came after the town of Wiscasset has gone to court and the State House in a bid to get tax revenue from Maine Yankee, which operated a 900-megawatt plant from 1972 to 1997. Following a decommissioning process that ended in 2005, Maine Yankee has stored waste in 64 steel canisters as the federal government mulls another storage site.
But Wiscasset officials have pushed back on the Maine Department of Environmental Protection ruling in 2001 and 2023 that Maine Yankee is an air pollution control facility. Maine Yankee, which first got the exemption from local property or real estate taxes last year, argued the facility is not mitigating air pollution but rather containing energy.
The town pointed to Maine Yankee owing nearly $1.6 million in real estate and property taxes in 2023, or about 14 percent of Wiscasset’s committed revenue, with records showing $93.8 million worth of Maine Yankee real estate — roughly half its total assessment — exempt from taxes for “air pollution control.”
In November, the town filed a challenge to the exemption in a pending Lincoln County Superior Court case and has pushed for the bill from Sen. Cameron Reny, D-Bristol, and Rep. Ed Polewarczyk, R-Wiscasset, that would no longer give Maine Yankee the exemption. The measure faces further action in both chambers.
Reny said no other state exempts such spent fuel storage facilities from property taxes. Maine Yankee has opposed the bill and argued its system prevents pollution by keeping dangerous radionuclides in the plant’s spent fuel rods from getting into the surrounding air.
Sen. Jeff Timberlake of Turner, who was one of six Republican senators to vote against the bill Tuesday, argued Wiscasset is in an “enviable and unique position” and that Maine Yankee’s ties to Central Maine Power and Versant Power mean ending the property tax exemption could turn into higher costs for utility ratepayers.
But Sen. Rick Bennett, R-Oxford, who supported the bill, said he “wouldn’t call it enviable.”
“Why should the people of Wiscasset cover the care and maintenance that this facility needs especially when the federal government will pay for those costs?” Bennett asked.
BDN writer Jules Walkup contributed to this story.
