ORRINGTON, Maine — Penobscot Energy Recovery Company has new owners again after it was purchased by Eagle Point Energy Center (EPEC).
With mountains of trash continuing to sit in the facility since the waste-to-energy company closed its doors and stopped accepting trash last September, the spokesperson for EPEC, Dan Cashman said it could take a year to resume basic operations.
"January, February, March of 2025 is ideally when the facility will be back online," Cashman said.
With the need for a full facility clean-up and some minor repairs to equipment sitting at the top of the to-do list for EPEC, Cashman said owners look forward to reopening the waste-to-energy site, but owners are committed to doing it safely.
Cashman said EPEC will implement a phased reopening approach to make the facility more modern and efficient.
"What people can look forward to is to have a plant online that is helping to do its part to help the solid waste management crisis that we're in right now as a state," Cashman said. "Our landfills can only take so much, and plants like this one are in existence to help with that, and having this particular plant offline for the past six to eight months has created a problem."
According to Cashman, 44 municipalities depend on the former PERC facility to dispose of its trash. Because the facility has been closed for several months, waste that would originally be disposed of at the waste-to-energy facility is now being rerouted to Juniper Ridge Landfill.
The landfill is owned by the state, and it is operated by Casella Waste Sytems.
"Thirty percent of the overall waste intake was bypass material in 2023," Jeff Weld, Casella's director of communications said, explaining how much additional waste the landfill is now accepting.
Weld said because of PERC's extended closure and because the landfill is taking in extra trash, waste that is supposed to be dumped in the landfill is now being displaced and sent off elsewhere to other locations.
"That waste that may have come in previously needs to find another destination," Weld said. "Maybe it gets exported to another facility out of state. Maybe it goes to a different facility in the state, but that material was displaced out of the Juniper Ridge landfill."
Weld said part of Casella's operational agreement with the state requires the company to be able to manage additional waste if another facility is offline for whatever reason. Cashman said the arrangement between the waste-to-energy facility and Casella will remain as is until the facility formerly known as PERC is back up and running.
"Whether or not it's an effective process, I don't know that it's my place to say," Cashman said. "But I think it's what exists though. And I think everyone's best case scenario, if that's the case, is to have facilities like this one back online and running."
Cashman said along with clean-up, the company is working to restaff the facility. Cashman said the facility's previous owner hired a staffing agency, but when EPEC purchased the company and decided not to use the staffing company, the staffing company fired all the former employees.
Now, EPEC is working to rehire some of those employees directly.