Long-awaited Fiberight Facility Slated to Accept Waste in April

In July 2016, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection issued permits to the state’s Municipal Review Committee and Fiberight to build a new waste management plant in Hampden. And despite Penobscot Energy Recovery Company’s appeal that challenged Fiberight’s permits, construction of Fiberight’s new $69 million, 144,000-square-foot waste-to-energy (WTE) facility began in October 2016.

In April 2017, Fiberight was granted with a $45 million, tax-exempt bond from the Finance Authority of Maine to help construct and operate its new WTE facility, which will convert trash from more than 115 communities into biogas. And in January 2018, Fiberight announced the completion of $70 million in project financing for the facility.

The facility was slated to open on April 1, 2018, but due to a number of winter storms, the construction for the facility was delayed and tens of thousands of tons of waste, including some recyclables and organics, were sent to either Juniper Ridge Landfill in Alton or the Crossroads Landfill in Norridgewock at a cost of $70 per ton.

Now, Bangor Daily News has announced that the facility is expected to be open in March 2019, and if all goes according to plan, the plant should begin accepting waste in April. However, potential hiccups along the way could cause further delays.

Bangor Daily News has more details:

The company developing a state-of-the-art waste processing facility in Hampden says the project will probably be completed by the end of March — nearly a full year after the facility was supposed to begin receiving waste from more than 100 Maine towns and cities.

Officials have attributed the delay to multiple factors, including weather that slowed construction last winter, a legal challenge to the project’s environmental permits and a changing market for recycled goods.

With construction complete in March, the Fiberight plant should begin accepting waste in April, the company’s CEO, Craig Stuart-Paul, said during a tour of the three-acre construction site this week.

Read the full article here.