A state representative said he did not agree to sign a letter submitted by a legislative committee to the Department of Environmental Protection in opposition to granting permits to a proposed waste management plant.

Rep. Bob Duchesne, D-Hudson, said in a phone interview Saturday he doesn’t know how his name ended up on the letter, but it was probably a misunderstanding.

A colleague had asked members of the Legislature’s Joint Standing Committee on Environment and Natural Resources to sign it, but Duchesne never answered and then was traveling, he said. He was surprised to find his name in the paper when he got back.

Duchesne has let the DEP know that he did not agree to sign the letter about Fiberight’s venture in Hampden.

A legislator possibly responsible for collecting signatures could not be reached by phone and did not immediately return an email.

The letter, signed by seven members of the committee, raises concerns about Fiberight’s funding and whether it adheres to a state statute on handling waste.

He doesn’t agree with some of the wording of the letter, he said, so he wouldn’t have signed it anyway. However, Duchesne still is concerned about the project.

Fiberight is a Maryland-based company that is proposing a first-of-its-kind waste management plant in Hampden. The plant would convert trash into biomethane and possibly other materials.

The project’s outcome will affect taxpayers throughout central Maine. Millions of dollars in disposal fees and the destination of thousands of tons of trash are at stake.

The company worked with the Municipal Review Committee, which represents the waste concerns of many central Maine towns, to secure more than 118,000 tons of trash per year from 104 towns, short of its original goal of 150,000. Under the proposal, the MRC would buy the parcel and pay for utilities and Fiberight and its financial backers would build and operate the plant.

Duchesne is most concerned with the economics of the project, he said, as there is much skepticism surrounding the technical aspects of the plant.

He also questioned whether Fiberight can stay financially solvent while guaranteeing the low rates it has offered to municipalities in the MRC.

“My deep concern is that things are going to go off the rails and we’re going to end up doing what we least want to do,” Duchesne said, “which is put trash in a landfill.”

Fiberight is being backed by Covanta, a multimillion-dollar sustainable-waste and energy company based in New Jersey, said Jessamine Pottle, spokeswoman for the MRC.

“The fact that Covanta is backing this speaks a lot to its feasibility,” she said on the phone Saturday.

Sen. Tom Saviello, R-Wilton, chairman of the committee, did agree to sign the letter, although he said he didn’t collect signatures, so he doesn’t know why Duchesne’s name was added incorrectly.

Saviello has “little confidence” that the Hampden plant will work, because there’s nothing for the committee to compare it to, he said.

Mostly, though, Saviello is concerned with Fiberight’s backup plan to send waste to the Norridgewock landfill. The draft permit allows Fiberight to take waste to the landfill if the plant isn’t operational by its goal of April 1, 2018.

“If this thing’s not built and not ready, we’re going to let you take it to a landfill?” he said on the phone Saturday. “I completely disagree with that.”

Fiberight and MRC could have chosen more environmentally friendly alternatives, he said, such as sending the trash to PERC or requiring the towns to single-sort their waste so the maximum amount of trash would be recycled.

The landfill option would violate state law, according to the legislators’ letter. The waste management hierarchy is the mandated order of ways in which trash should be dealt with. It goes as follows: reduce, reuse, recycle, compost, process, change to energy and, as a last resort, bury in a landfill.

Pottle said it’s up to the municipalities in the MRC to enact rules and regulations on recycling, and that the MRC does support waste reduction efforts.

If the part of the plant that uses an anaerobic process to make biofuel were to shut down, the other part, which sorts out recyclables, still could function, she said. Then trash would be moved to the landfill.

Madeline St. Amour – 861-9239

mstamour@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @madelinestamour

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