When Evan Coleman proposed building a $200 million natural gas-fired plant in Rockland, public outrage was swift.
Around 70 people packed city hall when Rockland councilors in 2015 weighed whether to grant Coleman’s company the option to build the 18-acre facility on city land. That vote ultimately failed.
More than a year later, the City Council approved several ordinances that would regulate future energy plants in the city.
In the years since the Rockland proposal, Coleman has been connected to about 10 projects. Some of them never came to fruition, such as strawberry greenhouses and warehouses, and some did, including four battery storage facilities in Maine and Rhode Island.
Now, Coleman is at the helm of his biggest gamble yet: reviving the shuttered Orrington trash incinerator, valued at $16.1 million in 2024, that sits on the shores of the Penobscot River.
The 32-year-old is the majority owner of Eagle Point Energy Center, formerly known as Penobscot Energy Recovery Co. He bought the facility in February 2024 but it hasn’t burned waste in more than two years, thanks in part to a fire that tore through the building in October 2024.
There’s a lot riding on whether Coleman can successfully reboot the trash plant. The stakes are especially high for the town of Orrington, which is a minority owner of the facility and has around $3.7 million of taxpayer money invested in the plant. But there’s also broader complications for Penobscot County, as the region grapples with a trash crisis while the nearby state-owned landfill nears capacity.
Coleman’s latest estimate for reopening EPEC is more than a year away, and will require $25 million of improvements and equipment.
And he admits that when he and his investors purchased EPEC, they thought they were buying a power plant. In the year since, he’s learned it’s a waste facility with a side of power, Coleman said.
But if he can reopen EPEC, Coleman envisions a facility that diverts waste from landfills, generates cheap electricity and eventually starts accepting materials that are hard to dispose of.
That would be good news for Orrington, which Coleman said has shown enormous support for getting the plant back up and running. That’s part of the reason he was interested in taking on EPEC, because of the sheer amount of support the community has for the plant.
The Bangor Daily News interviewed Coleman for nearly two hours, one of the first interviews he said he’s done in 10 years. He provided the BDN with various documents, including records of trash disposal. Coleman declined to be photographed.
A BDN reporter contacted more than 10 people and businesses who had previously worked with Coleman on various projects. Only two returned phone calls. At least two people told Coleman they had been contacted by the BDN, but did not return requests for comment.
Coleman’s past projects
Coleman has been investing in power generation for more than a decade.
He founded Clear Energy LLC, a company to truck compressed natural gas, during his freshman year of college. He dropped out of Assumption University in Massachusetts after selling the company, he said.
He sold the trucking company to Xpress Natural Gas in 2012, documents show.
Coleman later became a minority owner in New England Battery Storage, which built three battery systems in Maine, including two in Madison and a third in Rumford. The 5-megawatt systems absorb excess power to redistribute it later.
New England Battery Storage also built a battery system in Rhode Island that was sold to Agilitas Energy in 2021.
Coleman also co-owned a solar array in Pittsfield with Cianbro Corporation, which was completed in 2018. He sold his 30 percent ownership to Cianbro.
XPress Natural Gas, Agilitas Energy and Cianbro did not respond to requests for comment.
Not all of Coleman’s projects have materialized.
In 2014, Coleman proposed bringing a $100 million natural gas facility to Groveton, New Hampshire, which was supposed to bring 40 plant workers and another 44 truckers, according to Vermont Public. A different site in Massachusetts with a different company was ultimately selected, Coleman said.
James Tierney, a local elected official at the time of the project and now a New Hampshire state representative, did not return a request for comment. Jim Weagle, a selectman for Northumberland, a local municipality, did not return a request for comment.
When Coleman proposed the energy plant in Rockland a year later, there was concern from the community, said Audra Caler, then Rockland’s assistant city manager and now the town manager of Camden.
It can be difficult for large-scale projects to be successful, especially when they’re starting from square one, like the project Coleman proposed, Caler said. Pitching a project from that position is hard, she said.
“There’s always a lot of questions from communities and if you can’t answer them or you don’t have very complete answers from the beginning, it’s easy to lose a lot of credibility from the onset,” Caler said.
The project just wasn’t a good fit for Rockland at the time, Caler said.
Coleman was in his early 20s then, and from a business perspective it was a great project, he said. But, he’s learned that isn’t the only thing that matters.
“Power plants are a very personal issue to people,” Coleman said.
He pointed to power plant and power line proposals around the country that have met significant community pushback, like in Maryland, where proposed power lines across 70 miles of mostly rural land have led to public outcry and protests.
Coleman proposed a $10 million strawberry greenhouse project in the Madison Business Gateway in 2017 but it was never built. He also proposed a $95 million strawberry greenhouse and warehouse project in 2023 about 30 miles north of Buffalo, New York. That project was never built.
In February 2024, Coleman, through several companies, owed Central Maine Power $122,930. That debt, which was unpaid bills from tenants, has since been paid, Coleman said. He has challenged CMP’s decision to combine the debts.
CMP declined to comment.
Ties to Orrington
When Coleman bought EPEC, he entered into an ownership agreement with the town of Orrington. He owns 75 percent through Northern Farms LLC and Orrington owns 25 percent.
While Orrington will not provide additional money for repairs and replacing equipment, the town is tied to the fate of the facility.
Orrington has around $3.7 million of taxpayer money tied to the incinerator. The town converted $2 million in unpaid taxes and $500,000 of additional capital into a mortgage. Orrington is also the borrower listed on an irrevocable $1.25 million letter of credit with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, spokesperson David Madore said. That means up to $1.25 million will be paid by Orrington to cover costs associated with cleaning up the plant if it closes.
Orrington Town Manager Chris Backman declined to respond to multiple questions on the advice of legal counsel. The BDN previously sued Orrington because the town refused to provide records of its ownership of EPEC.
Reviving the plant is Coleman’s ongoing challenge. It will take $25 million to get the plant back up and running at an “extremely basic” operation, Coleman said.
Major construction will start in late June, and is estimated to be completed by December 2026, Coleman said.
Another unexpected hurdle has been the sheer amount of trash that was left at the facility.
Estimates of the amount of trash inside the facility ranged from 6,000 to 10,000 tons when the plant was sold at auction in November 2023. However, nearly 16,500 tons of trash and ash were found in the facility and taken to landfills, according to documents provided by Coleman. It cost $1.5 million to remove, according to disposal tickets.
Most of the trash was trucked to Juniper Ridge Landfill in Old Town.
In addition to the trash removal, EPEC still owes Orrington about $10,000 from a $42,600 bill for emergency services provided during the fire that’s due by July 1, Coleman said.
Future tests
Coleman’s ownership of EPEC is about to face its first major test.
His monthly mortgage payments of $24,721 to the town start July 1. Coleman has already made three payments ahead of schedule, but the promissory note for the mortgage payments was agreed upon in March 2024, months before the fire drastically pushed back the plant’s reopening timeline.
Orrington cannot foreclose on the facility if mortgage payments are not made because there is no mortgage agreement.
Not having a mortgage agreement was an oversight, Coleman said. Both sides should have double-checked that one had been filed, he said.
“The plant’s taking the appropriate actions to make sure the town’s position on the plant is secure, especially given the use of taxpayer money,” he said. “It was an oversight and it doesn’t look great, but I wish there was a better answer.”
While the plant sits idle, Coleman is making little profit.
The facility currently earns money from tipping fees paid by municipalities for handling trash, the same way other waste facilities operate. The DEP outlines how that money can be spent, ensuring it is used for things like maintaining the facility and paying staff. It can’t be used for capital improvements.
Those tipping fees are at the heart of a lawsuit brought in October 2024 by the former owners of PERC. The lawsuit says that PERC retained the contracts with roughly 44 municipalities, while EPEC says the contracts were transferred through the sale.
The lawsuit is still pending in Penobscot County Superior Court. No court dates are scheduled.
In April, Copia Specialty Contractors Inc. took out a $26,000 lien against EPEC for failing to pay for work performed. Coleman said $20,000 had already been paid at that time, and the rest was held until work was completed to satisfaction. He said the full amount has been paid, but the lien has not been removed as final details are figured out.
Copia did not respond to a request for comment.
Meanwhile, Juniper Ridge Landfill is looking to expand as it fills faster than expected. Other landfills in the state are approaching capacity and state law does not allow the creation of new landfills.
If EPEC doesn’t operate, it creates an “extreme environmental burden” for the state, Coleman said.
Incineration is not an ideal way to process trash, but it does reduce the volume going into the landfills, said Bill Lippincott, a member of Don’t Waste ME, a group advocating for policies that protect communities and the environment from landfills, incinerators and other waste disposal.
“The way Maine’s waste hierarchy is in order of preference, landfilling is the worst and waste energy is just above it,” Don’t Waste ME member Ed Spencer said.
If EPEC doesn’t reopen there aren’t a lot of alternatives to handle waste, especially as landfills head toward capacity.
Lippincott is doubtful that EPEC will reopen in fall 2026, while Spencer is skeptical but willing to wait and see.
“It’s very difficult to get excited about or have faith in these outfits because our hopes have been dashed so many times,” Spencer said.
