The operators of the Juniper Ridge Landfill alarmed environmental and community groups earlier this month with plans to move a proposed PFAS treatment system to an offsite location, requiring the facility to truck its toxic runoff 20 miles away.
The treatment system is a key requirement for approval of a 61-acre expansion permit that environmental organizations and abutters are currently fighting in court. Opponents of the expansion learned of the plan to truck leachate from the landfill in Old Town and Alton to the Pine Tree Landfill in Hampden through a document filed in court and with state regulators by the company that runs Juniper Ridge.
Leachate is the contaminated liquid formed when water runs through waste, extracting harmful chemicals including PFAS.
“If it’s not on site, that brings into question new environmental and public health concerns because you’re transporting massive amounts of leachate 20 miles south,” said Nora Bosworth, a lawyer for the Conservation Law Foundation, one of the groups opposing the expansion. “And you’re marching forward with a licensing process for an expansion that is huge and conditioned on a safeguard — the PFAS treatment system — that the public and DEP do not have information to analyze.”
It isn’t clear why NEWSME Landfill Operations, which operates Juniper Ridge and is a subsidiary of the $2 billion waste giant Casella Waste Systems, wants to treat its leachate offsite. The company did not give a reason for the proposed move to Hampden in the document to regulators, and a spokesperson for Casella did not respond to questions on Thursday.
When company officials gave legislators and reporters a tour of the landfill last October, they showed the group where they planned to build the treatment system at its current location. They explained that they planned to test two pilot systems this summer to see which technology worked best.
The Juniper Ridge leachate is currently trucked to ND Paper in Old Town, where it undergoes basic wastewater processing before being discharged into the Penobscot River. The PFAS treatment system required for the expansion would add another cleaning before the leachate is transported to ND Paper.
The Pine Tree location, also operated by NEWSME and currently capped, would require a separate permit from the state, creating confusion about whether the treatment system there might be approved before the expansion gets the green light, Bosworth said.
Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection approved the landfill’s expansion late last year. The expansion is expected to add 11 years of use to the landfill as the state grapples with a shortage of places to put waste. The Penobscot Nation and the Conservation Law Foundation appealed the expansion in Penobscot County Superior Court in July over concerns about forever chemicals, air contaminants and the proximity of the expansion to tribal lands.
The treatment system is key to the expansion meeting the public benefit requirement of the state’s waste management law. Penobscot County Judge Bruce Mallonee became the first Maine judge to cite “environmental justice” in his July ruling that the landfill’s owners and operators had not adequately considered the community’s right to be protected from pollution. He is still reviewing the case.
The state DEP has not yet received an application to install and operate a PFAS treatment system at the Pine Tree Landfill, spokesperson David Madore said.
The DEP has suspended deadlines and public hearings on the expansion until NEWSME submits additional information including a description of the leachate treatment process and how the waste will be transported. It also wants NEWSME to submit a new contract for the leachate treatment at ND Paper because that contract will expire soon.
Casella had planned to build the treatment system by 2027, but that timing is now unclear. About half of the state’s landfill waste ends up at Juniper Ridge, which is expected to hit capacity in 2028. Some 13.2 million people live within a mile of a landfill in the U.S., according to environmental engineering firm Fehr Graham.
Lori Valigra reports on the environment for the BDN’s Maine Focus investigative team. Email her at lvaligra@bangordailynews.com. Support for this reporting is provided by the Unity Foundation, a fund at the Maine Community Foundation and donations by BDN readers.