The former owners of the Orrington trash incinerator want a third party to manage the monthly fees municipalities are paying to the facility until a lawsuit decides who is legally entitled to the money.
The request comes amid an ongoing lawsuit brought by Penobscot Energy Recovery Co., the former owner of the trash incinerator, against Eagle Point Energy Center, the new owner of the facility on the shores of the Penobscot River. The lawsuit was filed in October and is still pending.
At dispute are the waste disposal agreements between the company that disposes of trash and 42 cities, towns and other community governments in the greater Bangor area. PERC says it still owns those contracts — which total at least $2.5 million a year — while EPEC says it has the contracts and is collecting fees.
Evan Coleman, the majority owner of EPEC, said he has no comment on the lawsuit.
Coleman bought the facility in February 2024. It had been foreclosed on in mid-2023, and sold at auction later that year. The auction did not include the contracts, PERC said.
The town of Orrington is a minority owner of the trash plant.
While the legal battle continues, a “significant percentage” of the 42 municipalities are paying EPEC to handle their waste instead of PERC, according to a Thursday court filing from PERC. That opens the municipalities up to “significant risk,” PERC said.
Municipalities pay more than $2.5 million per year to dispose of roughly 31,000 tons of waste, according to PERC’s filing. Officials have been told repeatedly that the payments — known as tipping fees — are supposed to go to PERC under the terms of the contracts, according to the court filing.
However, EPEC is collecting tipping fees from municipalities, which it should not be doing, PERC said.
Those municipalities are in a “difficult position of deciding who to pay,” PERC’s filing said. Municipalities who violate the contract are liable to pay fees “equal to three times the average annual amount paid to PERC for preceding two years, plus related legal fees and costs.”
Because of that dispute and the potential financial impact on municipalities, PERC wants the judge to appoint a receiver to manage the tipping fees and the waste disposal agreements. The neutral third party would take payments from municipalities and use that money to dispose of the waste in landfills. The receiver would hold any profit until the lawsuit is resolved, according to PERC’s filing.
PERC wants the judge to appoint Jason Mills, the founder of BCM Advisory Group in New Hampshire, to be the receiver.