The company planning to build an energy plant that converts municipal trash to biofuel will be presenting its proposal to the Winslow Town Council at its meeting Monday.
Representatives from Fiberight, a Maryland-based company working with the Municipal Review Committee, the association that represents solid waste interests for more than 180 communities, will explain the plan to build the plant in Hampden.
Craig Stuart-Paul, the owner of Fiberight, will attend the meeting, according to Town Manager Mike Heavener. Leaders from neighboring municipalities also are expected to attend.
Winslow, along with a number of communities in the Waterville area, has to decide by May whether to sign a 15-year agreement to send their trash to the Fiberight plant.
A town committee looking into solid waste options in town also is weighing whether to create a pilot project to collect food waste from residents to bring to Agri-Energy, an Exeter company that turns compost into energy.
The committee will discuss that program later in the month and also talk about a timeline for bringing a recommended course of action to the council.
“We recognize the time is quickly approaching. I suspect we will be talking about that timeline,” Heavener said Friday.
Communities represented by MRC, including Waterville, Fairfield and Winslow, now send their municipal trash to the Penobscot Energy Recovery Co., an energy producing incinerator in Orrington.
Those communities have a 30-year contract to send their waste to PERC, but that agreement ends in 2018, the same time that a contract the company has to sell electricity to Emera Maine at over-market rates also expires.
Representatives from MRC don’t believe PERC will be economically viable after 2018 and have warned that the cost to dispose of trash at the facility could skyrocket.
Instead, the MRC and Fiberight are pitching their own plan to construct a state-of-the-art biofuel plant in Hampden. For the proposal to move forward, it needs commitments from enough communities to deliver 150,000 tons of trash to the Fiberight plant annually.
Some of the MRC’s large members, such as Bangor, Brewer and Bar Harbor, are among a number of communities that have signed on to the plan; and other MRC members, such as China, are expected to vote on the proposal this month at Town Meeting.
But some communities are wary about the plan. Fairfield has decided not to renew its membership with MRC after 2018 and is pursuing a plan to allow residents to take their waste to a landfill in Norridgewock.
Officials in Waterville also have reservations about the Fiberight plan, including concern that its technology is unproven.
According to the MRC-Fiberight proposal, cities and towns would pay $70 a ton to deposit trash at the plant. MRC communities now are charged $76 a ton at PERC, but the cost is reduced to $59 a ton after rebates from the company.
The Monday meeting is scheduled to start at 7 p.m. at the Town Office.
The meeting will be preceded by a public hearing about proposed ordinance changes that would allow people to keep small numbers of chickens on their property in the town’s residential core.
Peter McGuire — 861-9239
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