Break up the MRC
By Jim Vallette
It’s time to disband the Municipal Review Committee, which is responsible for managing the wastes for 115 Maine communities, including 11 communities in Piscataquis County: Abbot, Atkinson, Bowerbank, Brownville, Dover-Foxcroft, Guilford, Milo, Monson, Parkman, Sangerville and Sebec.
Several years ago, MRC and town officials ignored warnings about Fiberight, the untested company it courted to develop a waste sorting and recycling facility in Hampden. Last year, shortly after starting operations, Fiberight defaulted on its loan and fled Maine. Now, MRC’s board is determined to make a deal with Delta Thermo Energy to take over the Fiberight plant.
DTE is a tiny company that has been rejected time and again by communities in the northeast U.S. , from Albany, New York, to Allentown, Pennsylvania, to Paterson, New Jersey. For over a decade, DTE owner Rob Van Naarden has been pitching communities to let him build plants that would turn sludge and garbage into burnable fuel. Now he wants to turn MRC’s Hampden plant into such an operation.
The president of the Pennsylvania Waste Industries Association warned in 2013, “Delta Thermo made a number of materially false statements to the public regarding their proposed project and the waste disposal industry as a whole.” He said DTE used “false environmental marketing claims”; some were “intentionally misleading.”
DTE has been unable or unwilling to provide MRC members with consistent basic information about its current operations. For months, I have been trying to understand what the company is doing today. Neither MRC nor Mr. Van Naaden answered this basic question until last week, when Mr. Van Naarden finally said, “As far as current operations, we’ve run a DTE facility in South Jersey outside of Atlantic City and currently in North Central Pennsylvania, just outside of Williamsport, Pennsylvania.” He added later, “We own and operate them.”
Board member Cathy Conlon said she was “a little confused by your answer earlier” and asked for clarification on what DTE is currently operating. Van Naarden said the New Jersey plant had to be disassembled after operating a few years, and that “currently we’re operating one in north central Pennsylvania – so at the very current moment there is only one operating, got it?” Pressed for further details, Mr. Van Naarden said the Pennsylvania “plant is nothing like the one in Hampden” and “there is no way to compare it.” Asked how many tons per year are handled there, he replied, “I can’t divulge that number.”
The only information I have seen regarding DTE in the Williamsport area is a spurned attempt to build a sewage sludge/garbage incinerator in the neighboring town of Muncy. After the meeting, the Bangor Daily News tried without success to find any sign of DTE operations in Pennsylvania.
BDN previously reported that many of the people listed in Mr. Van Naarden’s presentations as technical advisers had no knowledge of their role. During MRC’s meeting last week, a viewer asked, “Is there any new information on the possible misrepresentation of some of DTE’S associations/partnerships?” MRC Chair Karen Fussell replied, “We have no comment. We don’t know what you are talking about.”
Member towns signed onto a master waste agreement with MRC before the Fiberight plant went online. It locks towns into paying MRC for set volumes of wastes. Only MRC has the authority to break this agreement. It plans to transfer this valuable contract to DTE but needs the member towns to sign off on an extension as part of the deal through 2036.
The best opportunity to break MRC’s grip over our towns is now. I urge members to reject MRC’s request and to call for a members’ meeting as allowed under the Master Waste Agreement. It is time to explore legal options, including dissolution, because the Municipal Review Committee has demonstrated a chronic unwillingness to conduct due diligence in the interest of its members.
Vallette is vice chairman of the warrant committee for Southwest Harbor.