PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • March 1, 2023
About three dozen Maine sewer plants that send their sludge to Juniper Ridge, a state-owned landfill in Old Town operated by a subsidiary of Casella Resource Solutions. Last week, Casella decided that it was no longer safe to bury all of that sludge at Juniper Ridge. Without enough dry material to bulk it up, the sludge will pancake and the landfill could collapse, Casella said. Casella is now trucking 4,000 tons of Maine sludge – which equates to about 130 truckloads – to New Brunswick. Sarah Nichols of the Natural Resources Council of Maine said, “Casella didn’t have to shut down Juniper Ridge. There are things I know they could do and probably a lot more that I don’t. The question is: why aren’t they doing it?” Nichols blasts Casella for using the sludge disposal fee hikes it is charging municipalities to lobby for an appeal of Maine’s new laws that ban sludge spreading and out-of-state garbage from state-owned landfills instead of looking for a long-term solution to the forever chemical problem.