LEWISTON – A cost-saving deal between Lewiston and Mid-Maine Waste Action Corp. picked up a few more months from the City Council Tuesday.

The council pushed back the deadline for the five-year-old ash-for-trash agreement from March 30 to June 30. That’s the end of the city’s fiscal year.

A state review of landfills should be finished by then, and that will determine if the landfill will be allowed to expand or to privatize, according to City Administrator Jim Bennett.

“This just extends the deadline to the end of our fiscal year,” Bennett said. “Our budget assumes the deal will continue anyway, so this really has no affect on our bottom line.”

According to the deal, MMWAC burns Lewiston’s municipal trash. Lewiston takes the leftover ash from MMWAC’s incinerators and puts it in the city’s landfill. They give each other deep discounts.

The deal has been in place since 1997, but was renewed in 2001. It was threatened last year, after a management deal for the Lewiston landfill fell apart.

The city had negotiated an agreement with Casella Waste Systems to manage day-to-day operations at the city’s landfill. Casella would have been responsible for staffing the landfill, monitoring everything that goes in and paying for future expansions. The company would have paid the city $1 million annually, as well.

But the Maine Attorney General’s Office and the Department of Environmental Protection put a stop to the deal, fearing the company would start bringing in trash from out-of-state.

With a sudden $1 million hole in its budget, Lewiston considered increasing the fees it charges to MMWAC. The city and MMWAC began negotiating a new agreement in December.

Meanwhile, the state formed a commission to review landfill rules. Bennett said the MMWAC deal could hinge on that committee’s report.