The owner of a Bucksport landfill that used to be owned and operated by a now-defunct paper mill has begun planning how to shut it down.
Bucksport Mill LLC’s proposed plan for permanently closing the site is now close to 2,000 pages long, but state officials still are asking for the company to submit more information.
Work on shutting down the 109-acre landfill, which has been dormant for several years but has not gone through the formal closure process, likely will begin in a few months, a state official said.
Bucksport Mill LLC submitted its mandated closure plan on Nov. 1, said David Madore, spokesperson for the state Department of Environmental Protection. State officials expect to receive additional information from the company this spring and for the work to begin this summer.
“We expect that additional closure construction will occur during the 2026 construction season,” Madore said.
Bucksport Mill LLC, a subsidiary of American Iron and Metal, was ordered by state officials 18 months ago to make plans to permanently close the landfill. The company acquired the property from Verso Paper in 2015, after the paper company permanently shut down the mill that had operated nearby for more than 80 years.
DEP issued the closure order in August 2023 after it determined that the company was not meeting the requirements of its existing landfill license. Among the issues Bucksport Mill LLC needed to address in order to comply with its operating permit was providing annual proof of adequate liability insurance, documentation of regular inspections, annual water quality test results, and maintenance work and subsequent inspections of various parts of the landfill’s leachate collection system, according to DEP.
The company also had not permanently closed the north slope of the landfill, even though for years state officials had been telling it to do so, DEP said at the time.
Susan Lessard, Bucksport’s town manager who works closely with DEP as chair of the state’s Board of Environmental Protection, said some staff turnover at both DEP and an engineering consulting firm hired by the landfill owner have slowed the planning process down somewhat. She said Bucksport Mill LLC has asked for the landfill closure timeline to be extended, but that the state has not changed from its original landfill closure deadline of Dec. 31, 2026.
She added that Bucksport Mill LLC did complete some work at the site last October, but that it just addressed some deferred maintenance without implementing any changes required in the closure plan. She said that the company will have to cap the landfill site to prevent water intrusion and establish a long-term monitoring plan as part of the permanent closure.
The company’s landfill closure plan so far is more than 1,800 pages long, she said.
“The department asking for more information is not unusual,” Lessard said. “I am optimistic DEP will require Bucksport Mill LLC to follow through with this process.”
In recent years, Bucksport Mill LLC entertained the idea of partnering with the town or another municipality to again start accepting construction debris at the 109-acre property, but local officials panned the idea. The landfill is only permitted to receive wood waste and construction debris generated by its owner, which is a holdover from when it belonged to paper companies who ran the now-demolished mill. Household trash and other waste are not allowed to be accepted at the landfill.
Because of state laws, the only way the landfill could accept wood waste and construction debris from third parties would be if it is owned by a municipality. But Bucksport officials
have made it clear that they oppose it being revived by anyone because of leachate that drains from the site and flows into the Penobscot River.
