PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • February 28, 2023
Maine sewer plants have been plunged into chaos because the state has run out of room to dispose of their sludge and some are only days away from overflowing. The contractor who runs the state-owned Juniper Ridge landfill in Old Town announced last Thursday that it can no longer safely accept the growing amount of sludge being hauled there for disposal from Maine’s wastewater treatment plants. Juniper Ridge is getting too much wet, slippery sludge and not enough dry materials to bulk it up, such as dirt, wood, construction debris, or even garbage, according to Casella Resource Solutions. Without that bulk, the sludge could pancake and the landfill itself could collapse. To maintain stability, Casella needs about five truckloads of dry waste for every one truckload of wet. But two new state laws intended to protect the public from dangerous forever chemicals have collided: one that prohibits the composting or spreading of sludge over farm fields because of concerns about PFAS contamination and the other that bans out-of-state waste from Maine landfills.