The fate of the Orrington trash incinerator may come down to a judge’s ruling.
For months, Eagle Point Energy Center 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,” Evan Coleman, the company’s majority owner, said in an affidavit filed July 3 in Penobscot County Superior Court.
Coleman’s affidavit is the first acknowledgement that there is a threat of permanent closure of the trash incinerator on the shores of the Penobscot River. A permanent closure would mean 42 municipalities will not have a place to dispose of trash, and Orrington is on the hook for a $1.25 million line of credit with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection to safely manage the closure.
The affidavit comes in response 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.
No receiver is necessary and it would harm the trash incinerator, EPEC said in court filings.
PERC will file responses in the next couple of weeks, spokesperson Ted O’Meara said.
PERC sued EPEC in October as the companies debated who owned the waste disposal contracts with 42 municipalities that total at least $2.5 million in tipping fees a year. EPEC believes it controls the contracts and tipping fees, while PERC argues that the contracts were not included in the auction.
EPEC said it has its own undisputed contracts with municipalities, which PERC alleges are not valid.
The tipping fees fund EPEC’s operations, including payroll for nine people and repairs after a 10-day fire damaged the facility, the July 3 filing said.
“Freezing those funds would endanger Eagle Point’s continued operations and threaten permanent closure of the Facility, causing significant harm to the neighboring communities that are depending on its reopening,” the filing said.
The facility was foreclosed on in 2023 and stopped accepting trash by that fall. In February 2024, EPEC purchased the plant, of which Orrington is a 25 percent owner and has at least $3.7 million of taxpayer money invested.
After the fire, about 16,000 tons of trash were removed from the facility. EPEC blames PERC for the fire, saying the company failed to remove the trash and created the fire risk, according to an amended counterclaim in the lawsuit.
EPEC now alleges PERC acted negligently because the company “owed a duty of care to act reasonably to avoid causing foreseeable harm to others.” The counterclaim also alleges PERC trespassed after it “intentionally abandoned thousands of tons” of waste.
“It’s amazing that they keep bringing this up,” O’Meara said. “The plant was sold at a foreclosure auction [with] a complete listing of everything that was for sale. It was sold as is, where the buyers knew that there was trash on the tipping floor.”
No court hearings are scheduled.
