EAST MILLINOCKET, Maine — Businesses interested in exploring whether they can profit from a landfill at the center of a debate between Gov. Paul LePage and Millinocket leaders will tour the 3,300-acre facility on Wednesday, officials said Monday.
More than a dozen firms have expressed interest in possibly owning or operating the Dolby landfill in some manner, but only a few have committed to attending the pre-bid meeting at the town library at 10 a.m., said George MacDonald, director of the community assistance program within the state planning office. A tour of the landfill will follow.
MacDonald hopes to see many potential landfill operators there and won’t know what they have in mind for the landfill until the meeting, if not later, he said.
The state’s request for proposals regarding the landfill “is written broadly so we would entertain any reasonable proposals,” MacDonald said Monday. “Whether a company wants to propose doing something at it, utilizing it in some way, who knows?
“We want to see what interest is out there,” he added.
State officials have been exploring what to do with the landfill since the Legislature agreed last spring to assume ownership of Dolby as part of the state’s efforts to find a new owner to run the East Millinocket and Millinocket paper mills. LePage and legislators wanted the mills restarted to restore the Katahdin region economy, but potential owners shied away from the mills, which for decades used the landfill, because they felt it was an enormous potential liability.
Previous estimates set its shutdown costs at $17 million.
A New Hampshire investor purchased the mills and restarted the East Millinocket mill in October, employing about 216 workers.
LePage had been in talks with East Millinocket and Millinocket leaders since fall over sharing landfill operational costs. But LePage spokeswoman Adrienne Bennett announced earlier this month that the governor would withhold about $216,000 of a Sudden and Severe Impact Fund allocation because he felt Millinocket leaders had broken their word to fund landfill operations annually. He also believed that for many years the Millinocket mill was overtaxed.
Millinocket leaders said LePage had lied and they had agreed only to a one-time contribution to Dolby operations. State officials had proposed to allocate $150,000 annually to landfill operations, with East Millinocket and Millinocket contributing $50,000 each in cash or in-kind services.
If all goes well, a potential private mill operator will file a final proposal for Dolby ownership or operation by April 25, Bennett said.
“There will be a group of reviewers looking at their proposals. If we get a few proposals, it shouldn’t take more than a few weeks or a month to decide which should be pursued,” MacDonald said.
This could turn out to be another Roshomon adventure in Ka Ta Din with Conologue as Toshiro Mifune and penguin as Akira Kurosawa. Best film it and put it on the Maine public tv.
Wonder if Casella is interested ? he he he he he !
Is this good news or bad news????
The Governor would not consider, I hope allowing toxic waste from other mills to be brought there would he? Like the Lynne Tilton “corporatocracy”, “kleptocracy” boon doggle in Old Town,( thank you Mr. Baldacci ), or worse, be another Baldacci inspired solution of allowing waste to be brought in from Canada to Maine? Waste from JD Irvings mining excavations?
Or maybe the Chinese need a place for their waste???
Why is it I don’t trust this will come out as a sound management and remediation plan for this riverside toxic waste site.?
Fasten your seatbelts Lindsay because that’s just what’s going to happen! If nuclear waste pays the most, that’s what they’ll take, all the while telling us how lucky we are, or that the reason they had to do this was because of Millinocket or some other bald faced lie dressed in sheeps clothing.
so many toxins, so little time………
Hello magic milly..so how do we stay on top of this one and how can outsiders like me from way down here on Deer Isle help that citizen engagement.
We should all stand with East Millionocket and make sure they don’t get sold up the river again or end up with a situation over which they have no oversight or control that dramatically effects possibilities for the town and its people.
It is almost overwhelming to see how much is simultanenously happening, how many concurrent vuolations of the public trust are whizzing by us every day.
This one will be harder to have positive input to because it is owned by the State. I htink we lal have to scramble and see what protections exist in Federal Law annd make sure that at least Fedeal Law is followed in whatever happens next.
There are groups of citizens from around the state that are working on preventing out-of-state waste from being imported to Maine. Check out http://www.dontwasteme.wordpress.com
Today the senate voted to engross LD 879 (with only 4 brave senators opposing it), which allows the (only one in Maine) commercial dump in Norrdigewock to expand to accept unlimtied out-of-state waste.
http://www.dontwasteme.wordpress.com
Thanks for those links, but holy cow–talk about another can of worms…..this is going to take some serious studying…………..just on first glance at some of the information, how do these people sleep at night?
Dear Maine Libertry Man,
Thank you for that link and actually I did start some research on this “hazardous waste as commerce” thing and I don’t believe it is true that we cannot refuse all hazardous waste from outside of Maine from any state or country. I will do more work & pehaps can stay connected in via the website you have provided.
It is a very important issue.
This is another instance of the “bananism” of Maine..Maine as a banan republic at tbe mercy of voracious and predatory multi national corprations. Even small developing nations have woken up and decided that harzardpus waste is not what they had in mind in paricipating in “wold trade” and the gloval economy.
I have to do some more reserach..we can all do that..but what I have seen so far does not in anyway over ride a state or even a county or city saying that the importation of hazardous waste fromoutosd ethe ste is prohbited. And I think that is what we should go for.. a citizens’s referendum that says that and that by passes the corruption of our totally in the pocket of big corporate insterests legislature.
My thanks and my profound respect to the website owner who is challenging this ridiculous economic development policy and to every single Mainer who stands up and says
“NOT ON MY WATCH YOU DON’T”
I was glad to see that the Coastal Law Foundation has been keeping close tabs on Maine’s misguided waste management policy and on the Dolby land fill so that is a powerful ally if the Governor tries any shenaningans at Dolby:
http://www.clf.org/blog/tag/east-millinocket/
It’s people like you that keep my faith in Maine and actually the human race, both of which are pretty shaky when you see what’s going on. It is overwhelming as you said the “violations of public trust whizzing by us every day”. It’s a ray of sunshine that someone like you, who has no axe to grind and doesn’t even live in the area, but cares about what happens to all of us and to our state.
As for what to do? I don’t know. It’s hard to know which battle of the many to work on first. There’s just so much time in a day & I think that’s also what they count on. I’m not sure what Federal Law to look into?
magic milly, you are too kind..we are all doing the same thing when we turn up here to do something more than gripe or settle for dropping opinion like an offering in the out house.
even though it is “not in my backyard” what happens to the people of Millinocket at the Dolby landfill does matter very much.to me .if it can happen to them it can happen to us right here..we have to stand up for one another for bottom up local self determination instead of top down manipulation and oppression.
The blog Maine Libertry Man has provided is a place where we can stay in touch with one another on Dolby and hopefully BDN will do its job and stay on top of major events there too.
we all empower each other..we each magnify the power of one every timr we turn up.