The Bangor City Council’s vote Monday to send the city’s garbage to a yet-to-be-built plant in Hampden marks a milestone for the company vying to build that facility. Maryland-based Fiberight now has a commitment from the largest city in the region with the most trash.
But perhaps the most appropriate way to view the City Council’s 7-2 vote is as a vote in favor of the 25-year-old municipal partnership, the Municipal Review Committee, that would serve as Fiberight’s landlord and as chief overseer of the operation for the towns and cities that send their waste to Hampden.
Over the past month, the City Council has entertained two options for Bangor’s garbage in 2018: Fiberight or the facility where the city has sent its trash for nearly three decades, the Penobscot Energy Recovery Co. incinerator in Orrington.
Both options carry risk. With Fiberight, the risk comes with the uncertainty surrounding the permitting, construction, startup and economic performance of a new facility that would be the first of its kind to operate on a commercial scale in the U.S. Fiberight and its investors, led by waste-to-energy giant Covanta, would cover construction costs, estimated at $67 million. But the towns would commit $18.5 million — from a fund that has accrued over the years from their share of PERC profits — to prepare the site for development and to cover a range of contingencies.
With hopes of starting construction this summer, Fiberight has yet to secure its permits from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, which recently requested additional information from the company, including clarity on Covanta’s role in the project, how much wastewater the facility will discharge and the products it plans to sell.
With PERC, the risk comes from the facility’s long-term economic uncertainty. In 2018, a contract that has long guaranteed PERC above-market rates for the electricity it produces expires, meaning PERC would need to make up the revenue by charging towns higher fees for every ton of garbage. PERC would start towns at $84.36 per ton for 15 years; the Fiberight rate would start at $70 before rebates. Currently, the net rate at PERC works out to $59 per ton.
In order to stay viable, PERC said it plans to scale back operations, accepting 200,000 tons of garbage annually, down from more than 300,000. PERC would operate for two shifts daily instead of three, cutting labor costs and reducing maintenance spending due to less equipment wear, its managing partners say. On its new schedule, PERC said it will produce and sell power at times of peak demand in order to maximize revenue — generally the morning and evening hours.
The strategy is technically feasible, as long as the plant’s boilers don’t shut down and remain hot enough during the night shift, but the industry standard is to run incinerators 24-7, said Jeremy O’Brien, director of applied research at the Solid Waste Association of North America. The electricity strategy is also unusual but technically possible, according to Marco Castaldi, a chemical engineering professor at the City College of New York. Boiler operators shouldn’t time combustion of refuse to correspond with high market prices; the flow of refuse-derived fuel into the boiler would need to remain steady, Castaldi said.
Similar to Fiberight, PERC also faces unknowns about its operating plan, given that it’s uncommon.
Faced with two imperfect choices, the Bangor council opted for the waste plan to which the Municipal Review Committee is integral. The committee currently represents its 187 municipal members as part of the limited partnership that runs PERC. PERC’s 2018 plan didn’t provide for an MRC role, though PERC’s managing partners say they’d welcome an organization representing its municipal partners’ interests on its board.
Over the past several years, the MRC has taken on the role of seeking out a new solution for the region’s waste, negotiating the terms with Fiberight and securing waste commitments from its members. If Fiberight fails, the MRC would continue to own the Hampden land and could seek another waste solution. The interim backup plan is to haul waste to Crossroads Landfill in Norridgewock; the backup for PERC is Juniper Ridge Landfill in Old Town but no MRC backstop.
The MRC process was imperfect. The group worked on its post-2018 plan without much publicity as it solicited and reviewed 15 proposals and ultimately settled on Fiberight’s. Bangor Councilor Ben Sprague said Monday it would have helped if municipal officials were kept more in the loop throughout that process.
Ultimately, Bangor settled on a plan with MRC as the backstop. The towns that have yet to make their choice will decide between an unknown entity with MRC’s backing or a known entity with a less known future.
