The owner of the Orrington trash incinerator made its first scheduled mortgage payment.
Eagle Point Energy Center paid $24,721.50 on July 1 to the town of Orrington, according to a receipt provided by the town. The check number on the receipt matched the number provided by EPEC’s majority owner, Evan Coleman.
The payment happened the same week EPEC said in court that it faces the risk of permanent closure if a judge freezes a revenue stream during an ongoing lawsuit. EPEC is trying to restart the facility, burning trash from 42 municipalities to generate electricity.
The facility owes $2.5 million to Orrington after the town converted $2 million in unpaid taxes and $500,000 of additional capital into a mortgage.
EPEC has five years of monthly payments, totaling just shy of $1.5 million. On July 1, 2030, the facility must pay the remaining balance and any unpaid interest, according to the promissory note signed March 7, 2024.
It is the fourth payment EPEC has made to Orrington, but the July payment was the first in the contractually obligated timeline. The facility made three payments in March and May 2024, totaling $74,164.50. However, a copy of Orrington’s general ledger detail report states the EPEC had paid $52,442 as of May 13, 2025.
For months, EPEC has been embroiled in a lawsuit with the facility’s former owner, Penobscot Energy Recovery Co. At the heart of the lawsuit are tipping fees, or the money municipalities pay to the facility to collect their trash, which funds EPEC’s operations.
If those fees are not paid to EPEC, it “would endanger Eagle Point’s continued operations and threaten permanent closure,” Coleman said in court filings. Coleman responded to PERC’s request for a judge to appoint a receiver, a neutral third party that would take payments from municipalities and use that money to dispose of the waste in landfills, until the lawsuit is resolved.