NORWAY – The final piece of Oxford County Regional Solid Waste Corp.’s thrust to establish a universal waste storage facility nearly fell into place Thursday night.

Facilities manager Warren Sessions asked Norway selectmen for a plot of land on which part of a 20- by 40-foot building will sit. The building will store anything with a cathode ray tube, televisions and computer screens, currently termed universal waste.

The addition will be to the back side of the recycling building. Sessions said he had to ask selectmen because the building will infringe on the lot line between Norway-Paris Solid Waste land and Norway land.

Selectmen favored giving the land to the corporation, but a couple of them wanted to see the site before committing. They agreed to vote on the issue at the March 18 meeting.

“By the time we slope the bank it will affect 40 feet of their property,” Sessions said. “That’s where the town dumps the snow it takes off Main Street.”

The corporation learned it was to receive a grant for $35,000 from the State Planning Office last fall.

Sessions said it will be a simple steel-span building.

He said he took bids on construction through February and the board will award the job at its meeting at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Paris Town Hall.

“This was the last round of grants before start date,” said Sessions, who wrote the grant along with two board members. “We also got the biggest one in the state by being a regional facility. We service 19 towns in Oxford County.”

If completed, the building will be a year ahead of the Maine law concerning universal waste disposal. Starting Jan. 1, 2006 television and computer screens will no longer be able to be thrown into landfills or burned as trash.

“They did not call it a mandatory recycling,” said Sessions. “They just banned disposal in landfill or incinerator. The only option is to recycle.”

Sessions explained that TVs and computers have up to 8 pounds of lead in the screen.

“So, when they get burned up the lead goes up into the atmosphere and comes down with rain,” Sessions said. “That gets into water systems and fish. It’s a bio-contaminant and that’s not something that passes through your system, it builds up.

“I’ve already contacted an outfit that recycles them,” he said. “There will be an expense and that’s being negotiated now.”

[email protected]