LIVERMORE — Selectpersons on Tuesday night approved a five-year contract with Maine Waste to Energy of Auburn to have the town’s solid waste disposed of.

It includes a first-year fee of $84 per ton plus an annual adjustment of 2% minimum with a 4% cap, Chairman Mark Chretien said. The company also offered a three-year contract with a first-year fee of $87 per ton with 2% minimum increase and 4% cap annually, he noted.

Maine Waste to Energy uses safe and reliable systems to convert trash into renewable energy, according to its website.

The town’s five-year contract is expiring.

“Right now we are at just below $79 per ton,” Chretien said. “We are better off to go for five years.”

Selectperson Brett Deyling said those prices were good, a company he works with is at $90 to $92 per ton. “That contract is not bad,” he added.

“It is good to have somebody on the board who knows the prices,” Selectperson Scott Richmond said.

The town has a separate contract with Pine Tree Waste, Inc. of Scarborough for hauling waste, Chretien said Wednesday morning.

In old business, Richmond said he and Assistant Fire Chief Andrew Berry would be flying to Florida on Sept. 26 to complete the final inspection on the new firetruck, which should be delivered by mid-October.

In April 2022, voters approved purchasing a firetruck and financing up to $382,373 of the cost. A 10% increase was to occur May 1, 2022, so purchasing it before then would save about $70,000, Fire Chief Donald Castonguay said then.

Paving on the River Road will be done the last week of September, maybe a week earlier depending on the weather, Richmond said.

In other business, Deyling provided loon chick information in case calls came into the office about it.

“There was a group from Biodiversity Research Institute (in Portland) that took one of the loon chicks off Brettuns Pond and they are relocating it to a pond in central Massachusetts to hopefully expand the population of loons across New England,” Deyling said. “There are a bunch of ponds in Massachusetts, they sprayed DDT years ago and killed off everything. The loons never came back so they are taking loons from here and trying to introduce them into those waterways.”

It’s pretty successful, Deyling said. “The survival rate is generally about the same as if the chicks stayed in Maine,” he noted.

The institute raises the chicks, teaches them how to fish, keep them in pens and release them once they are ready to survive on their own. The assumption is the loons will come back to those same ponds in Massachusetts next year, Deyling said. The institute is looking for more chicks to relocate, he said.

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