Several factors have made the current situation for managing biosolids very challenging and uncertain for the Publicly Owned Treatment Works (POTW) who treat municipal wastewater and generate biosolids in Maine. Effective August 8, 2022, 38 M.R.S. §1306(7) banned the land application, sale, and distribution of “sludge and sludge-derived products” in Maine. POTWs were left with one option within the state to manage biosolids: disposal at landfills. Three landfills have provided for nearly all the biosolids disposal in the state, with the state-owned Juniper Ridge Landfill (JRL) in Old Town handling the vast majority. Not long after the ban took effect (February 2023), 38 M.R.S. §1310-N(5-A)(B) (Public Law 2021, Chapter 626) also went into effect, which set recycling deadlines that further exacerbated impacts to the overall management of sludge generated in Maine. Specifically, the operator of JRL asserted that there was consequently an insufficient amount of bulking agents—bulky materials that landfills mix with biosolids to achieve needed landfill stability—available to manage biosolids being added to the landfill and began turning away municipal biosolids. This left POTWs in a challenging situation in which they struggled to find a cost-effective outlet to remove and manage the biosolids generated from the continued treatment of incoming wastewater flows. In some cases, this led to sludge piling up on site, which in turn placed some of the POTWs at risk of being out of compliance with their wastewater discharge permits.

Due to swift action from the POTW community, the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), and Hawk Ridge Composting Facility, emergency measures were put in place to store and transport sludge to a vendor in Canada. While this was intended as an emergency operation, it should be noted that hauling biosolids hundreds of miles out of the country resulted in greatly increased costs to POTWs (and ultimately ratepayers), and also increased greenhouse gas emissions. Virtually overnight, biosolids management costs for many POTWs doubled, which caused severe and unexpected strains on public utility budgets.

The root cause of this challenge was, at its heart, a solid waste management issue—having too much biosolids and too few outlets. Report table ES-1 shows suggested “levers”—tangible actions to address the underlying issues— available to Maine government to address the key challenges impacting biosolids management in Maine and help avoid similar situations in the future. In particular, DEP, which oversees both wastewater treatment and sludge management, and the Bureau of General Services within the Department of Administrative and Financial Services, which is charged with administering state-owned landfills, will be integral in developing solutions.

Following the table is a graphic showing the projected biosolids management capacity in the state compared with the amount of biosolids currently generated. The graphic discusses the impact of key regulations, estimated landfill closures and regional biosolids facilities. The key takeaway from this graphic is that as soon as 5 years from now there could be a drastic shortfall in capacity to accept biosolids in the state unless some of the actions in the table are implemented.