BANGOR DAILY NEWS • December 1, 2025
Conservationist Bill Ginn is mad about what happened at the heavily contaminated Hawk Ridge Compost Facility that he started 35 years ago as a recycling center. He sold it three years after he started it. Since then, three large waste management companies have owned it, most recently Casella Waste Systems. Now the largest composting facility in the state, Hawk Ridge has processed 150,000 dump trucks worth of mostly papermill solid waste since 1989. Extensive PFAS contamination on and around it forced the company to announce it will close the facility by June of next year. “What we originally envisioned as a wonderful little organic composting facility that would make great products is now a toxic waste site,” said Ginn, who was chief conservation officer at The Nature Conservancy for 25 years until he retired six years ago. “It’s a terrible tragedy, what’s happened.”