The past six years haven’t been kind to the trash incinerator along the Penobscot River in Orrington.
On Tuesday night, a massive fire broke out at Eagle Point Energy Center, formerly known as Penobscot Energy Recovery Co. Orrington’s assistant fire chief, Chad Bean, said early Wednesday morning that the blaze has been contained, but it will likely take several days to fully extinguish.
That’s in part because firefighters, who came from as far away as Levant and Eddington, have been unable to safely enter the 200-by-400-foot building where the blaze is burning on the tipping floor.
In the meantime, Orrington and Hampden residents have been advised to keep their windows closed because of the significant smoke given off by the fire.
While a cause isn’t yet known, the facility’s owners said lithium-ion batteries likely sparked the conflagration.
It’s just the latest entry in a string of bad luck to hit the plant. Here’s a look back at its troubled past:
2024
Capping off a long and troubled auction process, Eagle Point Energy Center LLC acquired the facility in March. It entered into an agreement that gave the town of Orrington partial ownership.
In August, Eagle Point announced its plans to begin accepting trash as the first step toward restarting energy production there. It’s unclear right now how Tuesday night’s fire will affect that timeline.
2023
In May of that year, PERC ceased energy production ahead of going to foreclosure auction over the summer.
That auction, originally scheduled for July, was delayed again and again.
In September, PERC laid off 31 of its remaining employees.
When the plant finally went to auction in October, it didn’t garner a single bid.
In November, it was finally acquired by Delta Thermo Energy, which had made a failed bid to acquire a closed trash plant in Hampden two years earlier. But Delta Thermo backed out of that deal just days later, sending the plant to yet another auction round.
Then, after a third auction, the facility was acquired by Florida-based C&M Faith Holdings. C&M had an eight-week plan to get the plant up and running, but it failed to restart the incinerator.
During this time, the plant saw a trash pile spontaneously combust in November.
2022
The facility saw numerous fires during the year, some caused by improperly disposed lithium-ion batteries and others from wiring damaged in earlier fires.
2018
In March of that year, PERC lost a major contract with the Municipal Review Committee, an organization representing more than 180 towns and cities, largely in eastern Maine, in their dealings with the trash plant.
The loss of that contract came after PERC’s lucrative power-sharing agreement with Emera Maine, the predecessor of Versant Power, expired. Under the terms of that agreement, Emera Maine paid above market rates for electricity produced from burning trash there.
Following the loss of that contract, PERC laid off 20 percent of its workforce in April of that year.
The vast majority of the Municipal Review Committee’s members opted to support the construction of a new trash facility in Hampden. But that facility itself shuttered in 2020 soon after it opened, leading to a surge in landfilling and leaving the state’s waste management landscape fractured.
It has yet to reopen.
