MAINE PUBLIC • June 5, 2023
The Penobscot Energy Recovery Company, or PERC, is a 40-acre facility near the Penobscot River that has usually accepted trash from a group of 44 communities that includes Ellsworth and Deer Isle, as well as from commercial waste haulers, and burned it to generate electricity. While it used to be one of the dominant trash processors in the region, it’s had a hard time paying its bills since 2019, when it lost the business of many previous member communities to a new waste facility in Hampden. That's also when it lost a favorable contract to sell power back to the grid. Now, PERC owes money to lenders and is scheduled for a foreclosure auction on July 12. It has idled its boilers and stopped receiving trash from most communities.