A Penobscot County superior court judge has rejected the Maine Department of Environmental Protection’s determination that nearly doubling the size of the the state’s largest landfill would be a substantial benefit to the public.
In a ruling issued Wednesday, Judge Bruce Mallonee concluded the DEP failed to fully consider whether the proposed expansion of Juniper Ridge Landfill is consistent with its waste hierarchy plan and whether it is fair to the Penobscot Nation, located four miles away.
“The Department did not complete fact finding critical to its public benefit determination,” he wrote.
The ruling prevents the expansion plan from moving forward. The plan would have increased the trash-holding capacity of the 780-acre state-owned landfill by another 11.9-million cubic yards, which advocates note is enough extra space to hold the equivalent of nine Empire State Buildings.
The tribe and the Conservation Law Foundation applauded the ruling.
“For generations, we have spoken about the many impacts our community fights against at once — on our health, our lands and the Penobscot River, the oldest citizen of our Nation,” said Kirk E. Francis, Penobscot Nation Tribal Chief.
“This ruling affirms that those burdens must be taken seriously,” Kirk said in a statement. “We hope it signals a shift toward decisions that listen more closely to Indigenous voices and consider the full picture of the harm our communities face.”
The department said Friday it is reviewing the ruling and weighing its options moving forward.
In the 17-page ruling, Mallonee noted that needing a place to bury the state’s trash does not trump other statutory considerations when determining whether a landfill expansion application meets the standard of being in the public interest. All factors must be given equal consideration, he said.
Maine’s waste plan requires the state to consider reducing waste at the source before it turns to land disposal. But the record does not show DEP ever considered requiring the landfill’s operator, Casella Waste, to reduce the wet sewage sludge it buries there.
Maine has struggled with sludge disposal since 2022 when the state banned its use as a fertilizer because it contains high levels of harmful forever chemicals. Casella stabilized the semi-solid for landfilling by mixing in bulky waste, which has sped up how fast Juniper Ridge is filling.
Expansion opponents, including the Penobscot Nation and Conservation Law Foundation, have argued it would be better to use dryers at the landfill or at the sewer plants that create the sludge to reduce the volume of the sludge and prolong the landfill’s capacity.
But Mallonee saved his harshest criticism of the DEP’s public benefit determination for its two-sentence consideration of the Penobscot Nation — which he notes has melded its economy, diet, folkways and religion to that area — in its consideration of environmental justice.
The department appears to have collected information about the tribe’s history, repeated it back to the community to show that it was heard, he said, and then “set the information aside in favor of a narrow evaluation that excludes history entirely.”
Mallonee said the state didn’t fully consider the cumulative impact of having three major landfills and 72 closed but insecure landfills in the immediate vicinity when deciding that an expansion of Juniper Ridge was not an environmental injustice to the Penobscot Nation.
The bare historical record suggests those landfills were built not because the Penobscot Nation consented to their construction, he said, but because it was powerless to prevent it. He said DEP made no effort to consider that.
“The Department recited but did not analyze the Penobscot Nation’s intimate relationship with the Penobscot River and surrounding region, evaluate how that particular characteristic might bear on environment justice, or meaningfully assess how that interest was burdened,” he wrote.
The ruling gives the agency 75 days to incorporate those factors into its public benefit evaluation.