Nearly 14 months after Orrington signed a deal with the latest owner of an embattled local trash incinerator, it’s still unclear who owns the company and how much taxpayer money it has spent on the partnership.
Eagle Point Energy Center and the town of Orrington own 80 percent of the trash incinerator on the shores of the Penobscot River following a February 2024 sale from C&M Faith holdings. The plant shuttered in 2023 after longtime owner, Penobscot Energy Recovery Co., was foreclosed on.
The plant planned to start accepting trash in early 2025, Orrington Town Manager Chris Backman said a week after the purchase. The facility was dealt a blow in October when it caught fire and burned for 10 days, emitting air pollution across the midcoast and eastern Maine.
As of Friday, the facility remains closed and it’s unclear when it will reopen.
The town owns an undisclosed amount of the 80 percent ownership. Orrington also converted $2 million in back taxes and other money the town had spent on the plant into a mortgage that EPEC is supposed to pay monthly, Backman said when the sale happened in February 2024.
Since October, Orrington has failed to provide either a copy of its contract with EPEC or proof of payments from EPEC to the town despite multiple Freedom of Access Act requests from the Bangor Daily News. Without these documents it’s unclear how much tax-payer money is being spent on the still-shuttered plant, and whether EPEC is paying its monthly mortgage to the town.
The town has a legal obligation to promptly and fully respond to requests for public information, Sigmund Schutz, a lawyer who represents the BDN and specializes in First Amendment law, said.
“Orrington gets an ‘F’ on compliance with Maine’s right-to-know law,” Schutz said. “The town is illegally keeping the public in the dark about what it’s up to.”
The BDN first requested copies of payments from EPEC to the town and contracts between the two organizations on Oct. 29 through a Freedom of Access Act request.
That came the same month as the fire that destroyed the roof of the tipping floor and left thousands of tons of trash water logged from firefighting efforts. The Maine Department of Environmental Protection advised people to keep their windows closed during the fire due to air quality concerns, and approved a remediation plan for the area.
Backman responded to the October records request after six days instead of the legally mandated five days. He did not deny the records request at the time, but said that due to “ongoing litigation that the town may or may not be involved with this matter” he could not provide an estimated time for when the information would be provided. He did not cite the law under which he was denying the records.
Backman did not respond to emails the BDN sent in December, January and February.
Maine’s Public Access Ombudsman Brenda Kielty reviewed the exchange between Backman and the BDN and questioned what legal basis Backman had for denying the release “until an uncertain date in the future.”
Kielty is tasked with handling complaints about compliance with FOAA and mediating disputes.
“I am not clear on the grounds the Town is asserting for withholding otherwise non-confidential records until the completion of possible litigation,” Kielty said.
Schutz filed the same records request with Orrington on behalf of the BDN on March 28.
Backman responded April 2 and said it could take as long as six months to provide the records. He has prioritized his time to focus on a “pretty difficult budget season” for the next three months, he said.
Mike Curtis, an elected member of Orrington’s select board, deferred all questions to Backman when contacted by the BDN on Friday.
When asked on Friday about the BDN’s months-long attempt to acquire public documents from Orrington, Backman said he has no additional comment.
It’s unclear who owns EPEC. Evan Coleman has previously publicly spoken as a representative for the company. Coleman has a history of attempted developments in Maine through various companies, mostly registered in Camden.
He did not respond to a request for comment.
Coleman was a representative for a subsidiary of Energy Management Inc., which proposed building a combined heat and power plant in Rockland in early 2015. The city passed a six-month moratorium on energy plants in early 2016, killing the proposed development.
Coleman is also the manager for Northern Farms LLC, according to the incorporation. The company proposed a $10 million strawberry greenhouse project in Madison in 2017. The project received a $310,000 grant, but the greenhouses were not built.
Northern Farms also proposed building strawberry greenhouses in Niagara County, New York, in 2023. Coleman told Buffalo News that his Northern Ventures Fund has developed more than $1 billion in multiple facilities on the East Coast, including a battery storage plant. No additional information has emerged since.
Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled Brenda Kielty’s name. It has been updated.