PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • January 7, 2021
The state Board of Environmental Protection has denied a request to tighten the rules for out-of-state waste coming into Maine, saying a petition by environmentalists conflicts with state law. The loophole allows recycling businesses in Maine to accept and then dump waste from out of state. The wording has allowed a Lewiston recycler to send hundreds of thousands of tons of waste to a state-owned landfill run by Casella Waste. ReEnergy, the recycling company, sent 220,000 tons of waste in 2019 to the state-owned Juniper Ridge landfill. About 90 percent of it came from outside Maine. The BEP did decide Thursday to add “environmental justice” to the standards new projects will have to meet, although the term is largely undefined.