The Juniper Ridge Landfill can expand, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection decided for a second time — but a judge must sign off first.
A new public benefit determination allows the Old Town landfill to expand, the Conservation Law Foundation said Monday. The foundation and Penobscot Nation sued the Maine DEP in November 2024 over the proposed expansion.
The department had to reconsider allowing the expansion after a judge ruled in January that the Maine DEP did not complete “critical” fact finding during the public benefit determination. The Maine DEP decided Oct. 2, 2024, there is a public benefit to the expansion and expanding the landfill is not inconsistent with environmental justice.
Penobscot County Superior Court Judge Bruce Mallonee will reconsider the application because the case is still pending, Maine DEP spokesperson David Madore said. The department can resume processing the expansion application and will have a public hearing, he said.
“This decision does not reflect the lived reality of our people,” Penobscot Nation Chief Kirk Francis said. “Our voices and our knowledge of this place must be meaningfully considered when those in power make decisions that will impact our land and community.”
The lawsuit is still pending in Penobscot County Superior Court. The foundation and Penobscot Nation are determining next steps.
“The court couldn’t have been clearer: look at the full picture — the pollution, the history, the cumulative harm,” Conservation Law Foundation lawyer Nora Bosworth said. “Instead, DEP has once again treated environmental justice as a checkbox rather than a commitment to the people the law was meant to protect.”
A “substantial public benefit” is necessary to allow the expansion of a landfill and there are four requirements the state must prove. Mallonee said the department cannot give more weight to one of the four requirements.
The state had to consider environmental justice while deciding if the landfill could expand. It is the first test of a 2021 state law that says all people have the right to be protected from pollution and “to live in and enjoy a clean and healthful environment.”
The expansion would add the equivalent of nearly nine Empire State Buildings to the landfill, advocates said.
The decision comes as Penobscot County is in the midst of a trash crisis. Juniper Ridge accepts trash from dozens of Maine municipalities, as well as 25,000 tons of waste from out-of-state. The landfill has a capacity of 10 million cubic yards and will run out of room in 2028 if it continues accepting trash at the current rate, Casella Waste System said previously.
The Maine DEP’s draft approval would more than double the state-owned Juniper Ridge Landfill.
The “urgent reality” of Maine’s looming trash crisis does not mean the state can ignore the “cumulative environmental burdens borne” by the tribe, including other landfills near it and their relationship with the river, to allow the state to find the proposed expansion fulfills environmental justice, Mallonee wrote.
