WINTHROP — Come 2018, the town will be sending its trash much closer to home.

Like many municipalities across central and northern Maine, Winthrop now sends garbage left at its transfer station to Orrington, where it is burned at a waste-to-energy facility known as Penobscot Energy Recovery Co., or PERC.

But a contract that now allows PERC to sell electricity at an above market rate to the power company Emera Maine is expiring in 2018, the same year the long-term waste disposal contracts between PERC and 180 cities and towns — including Winthrop — are set to expire, meaning any future contracts would be less favorable to the towns involved.

Rather than continuing to send garbage the 89 miles to Orrington after 2018, the Town Council has decided to instead send waste to Mid-Maine Waste Action Corp., a waste-to-energy plant just 21 miles away in Auburn.

“For me, it was a geographical thing,” said Town Manager Peter Nielsen, one of the town’s employees who inspected the Auburn plant and recommended the council approve a 10-year-contract with it. “That 89 miles is a factor even when fuel costs are low.”

The Auburn facility opened in 1986 and serves 26 central Maine communities. A dozen of those municipalities, including Auburn and neighboring Monmouth, own a stake in the plant. The remaining 14 have contracts with it, according to Joe Kazar, executive director of Mid-Maine Waste Action Corp.

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By going with what’s nearby, Winthrop sidestepped a tricky decision.

According to Nielsen, the town also received bids from PERC, a landfill in Norridgewock and a waste-to-energy facility that has yet to be built in Hampden.

The organization that represents the 180 towns and cities that send their trash to PERC, the Municipal Review Committee, feels the Orrington plant will not be viable after the Emera Maine contract expires in 2018. It has pushed its member towns, which stretch from southern Kennebec County to the coast and to Aroostook County, to support the new facility in Hampden, which would rely on a relatively untested technology developed by a Maryland company known as Fiberight.

Many municipalities who send their trash to PERC, including China, Bangor and Bar Harbor, have approved switching to Fiberight. But some central Maine communities have been more tepid. Fairfield, for example, has voted to send its trash to the Waste Management landfill in Norridgewock.

To send its trash to the Mid-Maine Waste Action Corp. in Auburn for 10 years, Winthrop will pay a per-ton cost, or tipping fee, of $72.

That is greater than the $64.50 tipping fee the Norridgwock landfill was asking for as part of a five-year contract, but the council declined to go with the landfill because it was more interested in having its trash recycled, Nielsen said.

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The Auburn tipping fee is also pricier than the $70 that would be paid to send trash to the unbuilt Hampden plant on a 15-year contract, but less than the $84.36 tipping fee to send trash to PERC for the same time period, according to bids provided by both groups.

The town generates approximately 2,800 tons of trash every year, according to Nielsen.

But the savings is apparent in the fuel costs Winthrop would have paid to send trash to Auburn this year, which Nielsen calculated based on the amount paid to ship garbage to Orrington in the 2016 fiscal year. Nielsen figured it would have cost $4,410 in fuel costs to ship to Auburn versus $16,541 for Hampden (80 miles away) and $18,379 for Orrington (89 miles away). The fuel costs for shipping to Norridgewock (35 miles away) would have been $7,351.

Using those fuel estimates, Nielsen figured it would have cost $206,010 to send garbage to the Auburn plant on the 10-year contract. On the 15-year-contracts offered at Hampden and Orrington, annual costs would have been $212,541 and $254,587, respectively. Annual costs through the five-year contract at the Norridgewock landfill would have been $187,951.

Nielsen said he and the town’s transfer station operator, Larry Cole, both visited the Auburn plant and found it to be “well cared for” and have “good, existing technology.” The facility includes a transfer station and a 200-ton-per-day incinerator, according to the group’s website.

Nielsen also emphasized that the town will continue to send waste to the Orrington plant until 2018.

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“We’re still dealing happily with PERC,” he said.

Charles Eichacker — 621-5642

ceichacker@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @ceichacker


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