BANGOR DAILY NEWS • August 4, 2022
A company expected to play a key role in reviving a Hampden trash plant that’s been closed more than two years is inextricably linked with a firm that came to Maine more than a decade ago, pledging to reopen the Katahdin region’s two paper mills and start a facility making wood pellets that could serve as a coal substitute. Cate Street Capital instead left behind operations that either failed or never materialized, along with unpaid bills to vendors and the federal government, and two bankruptcies. It restarted the East Millinocket paper mill for about 2½ years, but the Millinocket mill lay dormant. The wood pellets plant slated for Millinocket never came to fruition. In the process, Cate Street benefited from more than $140 million in state and federal tax breaks and lending.