EAST MILLINOCKET, Maine — A New Hampshire investor’s failed deal to revitalize two local paper mills has left taxpayers liable for annual operating and monitoring costs of a 173-acre landfill that averaged $400,000 over the past three years and will cost an estimated $17 million to eventually close.
The Dolby landfill is located off Route 157 about 2.5 miles northwest of downtown East Millinocket. The state assuming ownership of the landfill was a crucial part of the state’s effort to facilitate Cate Street Capital’s purchase of the mill sites in Millinocket and East Millinocket for $1 in the fall of 2011.
The Dolby landfill is now used occasionally by the towns of East Millinocket, Medway and Millinocket, which store their wood ash from burn piles and wastewater treatment residuals there, said Michael Barden, landfill oversight manager with the Maine Department of Economic & Community Development.
Although Dolby could be developed as a commercial landfill by adding to its cells or otherwise expanding it, there are no plans to do so. The state neither has need for it, Barden said, nor is the site strategically located within the state for further development.
“No one is really looking at that option right now,” Barden said recently.
Like controversial tax incentives, such as the $16 million Cate Street investors still stand to earn through the state’s New Market Tax Credit program for attempting to finance the East Millinocket mill, the Dolby landfill is a legacy of the high-profile effort to restart the former Great Northern Paper mills in Millinocket and East Millinocket.
Costs associated with the Dolby landfill stem from it being tested several days per week by an engineering firm contracted by the state, according to data provided by Barden.
According to a state breakdown, $322,845 in expenses were generated by the landfill in 2012 for landfilling, water quality inspection, cleaning of leachate ponds, soil analysis, air release testing and other routine work. The cost rose to $345,919 in 2013, and $532,715 in 2014. The landfill is located near the Penobscot River watershed, adding to pollution concerns.
According to a state report issued in 2015, state drinking water standards for harmful chemicals were exceeded in several groundwater monitoring wells at the landfill in 2014.
Arsenic, iron, manganese and sodium were found to exceed the state’s maximum exposure guidelines in several of the wells. The report concluded that “[o]verall, the impact of the Landfill on the surrounding water quality is not considered to pose a threat to public health.”
All but about 400 cubic yards of the facility is full of wastewater sludges, wood room and woodyard waste, wood ash, and general rubbish from the Millinocket and East Millinocket mills stored there since 1979, according to Barden and t he landfill’s official website.
East Millinocket contributes to the landfill’s operation by plowing the road to it in winter and by having police patrol the area regularly, said Angela Cote, the town’s administrative assistant.
Otherwise, East Millinocket, Medway and Millinocket all pay $35 per ton to dispose of waste there, said Richard Angotti Jr., chairman of the Millinocket Town Council. Each town has its own transfer station and sends most of its municipal trash to the Penobscot Energy Recovery Co. plant in Orrington.
State officials have estimated closing the Dolby landfill once it reaches capacity will cost $11 million, plus another $6 million in costs over the ensuing three decades for continued environmental testing.
In 2011, lawmakers agreed to take ownership of the Dolby landfill from Brookfield Asset Management, which owned the mills then, over complaints from some that the deal amounted to “corporate blackmail.” At the time, Cate Street officials said the landfill was such a liability that it would prevent anyone from buying and restarting the mills.
At first, the Cate Street deal held promise. The East Millinocket mill restarted and returned more than 200 jobs to the region before closing on Feb. 6, 2014. The Millinocket mill never restarted. Its assets were sold off, followed later by an auction of the East Millinocket holdings during bankruptcy proceedings in 2014.
Two other landfills, in Old Town and Norridgewock, are expected to operate for many years, negating the need to use Dolby. Although Old Town’s state-owned landfill is expected to reach capacity in 2018, its operators are applying to expand it significantly. Norridgewock, which is privately owned, is expected to reach capacity in 2025, Barden said.
The Dolby acquisition was similar to the path the state took in Old Town in 2004, when it purchased a landfill owned by Georgia-Pacific Corp. for $26 million in a revenue-neutral deal, in large part to help keep the local paper mill in business. Georgia-Pacific kept the mill running for two more years, closing it in March 2006 before selling it for $1 later that year.
The mill, which has since changed hands twice and is currently owned by Expera Specialty Solutions, is producing pulp. The state-owned Juniper Ridge landfill is operated by Casella Waste Systems, which paid the $26 million purchase price to Georgia-Pacific on behalf of the state and receives all revenue from running the facility.
Rep. Steve Stanley, a Democrat from Medway, told the Bangor Daily News that there doesn’t appear to be a long-term plan for Dolby landfill.
“I have been kind of waiting myself to see what the state’s intentions are, and I haven’t heard anything,” said Stanley. “I think they ought to close it if there isn’t going to be a mill using it. It will be an environmental [problem] eventually.”