State environmental officials are considering letting Casella Solid Waste mothball current policy and send solid waste once meant for Biddeford’s incinerator directly to the Juniper Ridge Landfill it manages in Old Town.

It’s a concern for officials at other Maine incinerators, such as Auburn-based Mid-Maine Waste Action Corp., because it signals an end to years of policy that favored burning trash instead of landfilling.

“Landfilling is meant to be the solid waste management method of last resort, according to state policy,” said Joe Kazar, executive director of Auburn’s MMWAC incinerator. “We hope there is going to be a discussion of that policy before it is changed. We’d like to see that discussion and a discussion of how the waste-to-energy facilities can get a crack at that waste.”

The Maine Bureau of General Services, which owns the Old Town-based Juniper Ridge Landfill, filed the application with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. The landfill is managed by Casella.

Maine DEP representative Samantha DePoy-Warren said Commissioner Patricia Aho is taking requests for a public hearing until Oct. 23.

“She’s very amenable to having a hearing on the matter,” Depoy-Warren said. “It really is a statewide issue, with both people in Biddeford and Old Town interested in the outcome. If the public requests a hearing, we’ll schedule one.”

The hearing would likely be scheduled this fall in Augusta, if there is enough demand for it. The state has created a webpage to distribute information about the application.  Public comments can be emailed to Solid Waste Project Manager Michael Parker at [email protected]v.

The application centers on where Maine-generated solid waste should go once Biddeford’s MERC, the Maine Energy incinerator, closes.

MERC took in 259,400 tons of solid waste in 2011 — 89,400 tons from Maine and roughly 170,000 tons from out-of-state — according to the application.

Casella’s agreement to accept that out-of-state waste ends when MERC closes, according to the application, but the 89,400 tons of in-state waste still has to go somewhere.

That waste should go directly to the Juniper Ridge landfill, according to the application.

“Maine’s priority has been to reduce, reuse, recycle, incinerate and then landfill,” Kazar said. “It’s called the Waste Management hierarchy and it’s been the state’s policy for more than 20 years.”

That policy urges residents to reduce what they throw away, and then recycle and compost what they can. The rest should be burned in a waste-to-energy incinerator and anything that can’t be burned and the resulting ash should be sent to a landfill.

Kazar said he doubts that MMWAC and the state’s other incinerators — Portland’s EcoMaine and the Penobscot Energy Recovery Co. in Orrington have the capacity to take all 89,400 tons of trash today, but they could take much of it.

“These facilities rely on having a steady waste stream, and that can mean taking waste from out of state,” Kazar said. “But they might not have to rely on taking out-of-state waste if that in-state waste can be directed to the incinerators, where it should be going in the first place.”

It could give those facilities a chance to expand, he said.

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