About CAPIT and Waste in Maine

CAPIT stands for Citizens Against Pollution in Town. CAPIT was formed in 2005 by people from Athens, Maine and surrounding towns who were concerned about a proposed incinerator that would be built in their town, less than 2 miles from the local school. CAPIT began holding weekly meetings, rallies, dinners, talking to their neighbors, getting info out to the press, distributing information at fairs, researching waste and incineration, and working with other groups throughout the area who wanted to do something about the flood of waste being dumped and burned in their communities.

The Athens incinerator (masquerading as a �biomass boiler�) would have been run by GenPower, a Massachusetts waste and energy company. GenPower planned to burn up to 3 million pounds a day of construction and demolition debris shipped in from out of state. This waste would have been allowed to include thousands of pounds a day of plastics, arsenic treated wood, and wood painted with mercury and
lead-based paints.

The funding for this incinerator would have come in large part from Maine taxpayer dollars and from �Renewable Energy Credits� from Massachusetts. The Renewable Energy Credit program was set up to provide funding for energy sources that would not contribute to climate change, but thanks to well-funded waste-industry lobbying, those credits, funded by all electric-bill payers in Massachusetts, are now being used to fund electricity produced by waste incinerated in Maine (which exports a third of its electricity to Massachusetts.)

Thanks to the work of hundreds of people from Athens and surrounding towns who donated their time, energy, creativity, skills, and other resources to educating themselves and their neighbors about the dangers of the incinerator, plans for the incinerator were finally stopped, and a local ordinance banning the commercial incineration of construction and demolition debris was voted in by the people of Athens.

The story doesn�t end there, however. The corporations looking to profit off waste are actively searching for new sites in Maine. 85% of the construction and demolition waste burned in Maine is being shipped in from out of state, and that amount is expected to increase since Massachusetts has banned the landfilling of this waste and New Hampshire has banned the incineration of this waste. These bans were meant to encourage needed reuse and recycling of construction and demolition debris, but waste companies are taking the cheap (in fact, profitable) and easy way out by shipping their waste to Maine. These companies are taking advantage of Maine law that says it is safe to incinerate this toxic waste. The companies are also being helped by the near-monopoly of a waste company, Casella, which is working hard to expand and operate new landfills for toxic construction and demolition waste in Maine.

Casella operates the state-owned landfill in West Old Town, and is in the process of gaining approval for a 113 acre expansion. Casella also owns and operates the massive leaking toxic mountain of a landfill in Hampden. Casella is also working with administrators in the City of Lewiston to get them to give the company operating-rights to the Publicly owned and operated landfill. This would basically privatize the landfill (though since it would be Publicly-owned, the Public would have the responsibility for any clean-up costs) and would take away much of the Public oversight that people have when it is fully Publicly owned and operated. The plan would allow the importation of 624 million pounds a year of out-of-state construction and demolition waste. This would set a state precedent for the effective privatization of municipally-owned landfills, and open other Maine communities to the privatization of their Publicly-owned landfills. Casella has also effectively lobbied Maine policy-makers to twist their definition of �in-state waste� to include all waste that is �processed� in Maine, even when it is shipped in from out of state. Incidentally, Casella owns a number of these �processing� centers.

Construction and demolition waste is being shipped into Maine to provide fuel for �biomass boiler� waste incinerators. The landfills receive whatever can�t be burned, and the extremely toxic ash that results from the burns (The ash is also used as fill under roads.) These �boilers� were originally designed to burn plain wood, but Maine Government has effectively blocked any real Public participation in the decision-making process, and has given approval for the companies to burn the much cheaper and much more toxic construction and demolition waste. Currently, there are �biomass boiler� incinerators permitted to burn construction and demolition waste in Ashland, Greenville, Livermore Falls, Old Town, Sherman, and Stratton. There are also Municipal Solid Waste incinerators that burn this and other waste in Portland, Biddeford, Auburn, and Orrington. Most of these incinerators have been or are currently in violation of the Clean Air Act. There are proposals for incinerators that could be permitted to burn this waste in Westbrook and Millinocket, as well as for new or expanded dumps for this waste in Lewiston, Township 14 in Washington County, and West Old Town. Many of the plans are being pushed by the pulp and paper industry, which is converting much of its Maine operations from paper production into waste importation, landfilling, processing, and incineration.The companies pushing these plans, such as Casella, SAPPI, Boralex, and GenPower, are backed by some of the most well-funded and politically well-connected lobbyists in Maine.

In spite of the growing power of corporations and individuals who are profiting off toxic waste, at the expense of the communities where it�s being dumped and burned, there has been effective resistance to these plans like this by communities around the world. Maine alone has a number of success stories. In the 1980�s people in Washington County organized to stop a toxic waste dump from being built and worked to change state law to ban any new commercial landfills (the plans to give operating rights of the Lewiston landfill to Casella would run around this law and effectively make it meaningless.) Twenty years ago people in Cornville stopped a nuclear waste dump from being built in their town. And the success of people in Athens, a community of 800 people in rural Maine, in stopping the multi-million dollar GenPower incinerator, further proved that people working together hold serious power, and that the plans of waste-industry goliaths are not unstoppable. We know that Maine has one of the asthma rates in the nation, significantly higher than average cancer rates, and extremely dangerous levels of mercury and dioxin in fish and wildlife. We also know that waste incineration contributes to climate change. We know that if we want to be healthy and survive and take care of our communities, we need to change how this society deals with waste.

CAPIT is continuing its work to solve these problems by helping people in surrounding communities who are fighting toxic waste, continuing to gather information about healthy ways to prevent resources from becoming toxic waste, working on starting a local reuse and recycling program, and finding ways to reduce the extremely high rates of asthma in our community.

If you would like more information about waste and incineration, the Athens ordinance that bans construction and demolition waste incineration, and work being done in Maine and around the world to deal with these problems, please be in touch with CAPIT and these other organizations working to help communities protect themselves from toxic waste.

CAPIT c/o Lister, PO Box 129, Athens, ME 04912. 207-649-5980. sterren (at) brandeis.edu.

We the People, PO Box 471, Milford, ME 04461 / gibbsmilford (at) aol.com

Clean Earth Maine, PO Box 1, Jonesboro, ME 04648 / nancyoden (at) cleanearth.net / 207-434-6228

Maine Earth First! PO Box 917 Belfast, ME 04915 / maineef (at) yahoo.com

Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA). 510-993-9490 ext. 102. / dave (at) noburn.org