Maine
Auburn’s new recycling plan calls for weekly pickup
AUBURN — A new solid waste and recycling plan presented to the City Council on Monday calls for several robust changes to the city’s curbside programs, including weekly recycling pickup and providing wheeled, lidded containers.
Prior to a unanimous vote to accept the plan Monday, Mayor Jeff Harmon said the list of recommendations from the Sustainability and Natural Resources board will be reviewed during an upcoming workshop, giving councilors time to read the report and consult with constituents.
The committee process to look at Auburn’s solid waste plan, approved by the council in January, came after the previous City Council ended Auburn’s curbside recycling program last year. The decision resulted in months of debate over recycling, a beleaguered drop-off-only system and a new-look curbside program implemented late last year.
The city’s current recycling program accepts certain plastics, cardboard and mixed paper, but does not accept glass and metals. The committee’s report said the city should again accept all recyclable materials, including glass and metals, to ready Auburn for the state’s rollout of the Extended Producer Responsibility Program.
Maine’s Extended Producer Responsibility program for packaging, approved in 2021, will require most producers of packaging to pay into a fund based on the amount and the recyclability of packaging associated with their products. According to the law, the funds will then be used to “reimburse municipalities for eligible recycling and waste management costs, make investments in recycling infrastructure, and help Maine citizens understand how to recycle.”
The committee’s report said that by recycling all items on Maine’s Extended Producer Responsibility list, Auburn can access new funding to offset collection and processing costs for household solid waste.
Ralph Harder, a member of the committee that issued the report, said the committee looked at Auburn’s current system of handling household trash, recycling and food scraps. The recommendations center on ways Auburn can reduce its waste stream and its costs through better recycling participation rates and additional ways to divert solid waste — like a more robust composting program.
Harder said the amount of trash generated per capita in Maine is rising while the level of diversion has remained flat. He said food waste represents roughly 35% of the weight in Auburn’s solid waste, meaning if that can be diverted through composting, the city’s tipping fees can be reduced dramatically.
The report said Auburn should expand its food waste drop-off sites while also partnering with the school department.
Other recommendations include adding a city staffer to oversee the solid waste programs, and public engagement to better educate residents and track results. The report also says the city should use the Extended Producer Responsibility process to investigate other possibilities, such as incentives to limit household trash. Incentives used in other communities include limiting the size of trash containers.
Councilor Adam Platz said waste reduction methods must be considered, to avoid “doing this every five years for the rest of our lives.”
“We can’t just subsidize throwing away all this waste,” he said.
Councilor Ben Weisner said he’s “very interested in the composting component.”
Before he was elected, Mayor Jeff Harmon campaigned on bringing back a more robust recycling program. When the Sustainability and Natural Resources board was tasked with conducting a comprehensive review of the city’s programs, he said it was “unfortunate and a mistake” for the prior council to stop curbside pickup, and that that new curbside program should only be a “stopgap measure.”
When the changes to the recycling program were made during the previous council’s term, officials said negotiations with contractor Casella centered on what materials are being recycled and used in secondary markets.
When briefly ending the recycling program in May of 2023, Auburn officials argued that it is cheaper to send material to Maine Waste to Energy in Auburn for incineration than to pay for a curbside program, where some materials end up incinerated anyway. Auburn has also historically experienced very low recycling rates.
However, Harder said Monday that the committee believes the rate is higher than the 7% that has been cited in the past.
Many Maine municipalities will open cooling centers this week with the National Weather Service issuing a variety of heat advisories covering the next few days.
The Maine DEP also issued an air quality alert for Wednesday with ground-level ozone expected to reach levels that are unhealthy for sensitive groups.
All of York County, interior Cumberland and Androscoggin counties, and the southern half of Oxford County will fall under an extreme heat warning from 11 a.m. Wednesday to 8 p.m. Friday.
The warning calls for “dangerously hot conditions” that could feature heat index values of up to 110 degrees, with overnight lows only expected to fall into the 70s, according to the weather service’s office in Gray.
The rest of the state — save northern Aroostook, Piscataquis and Somerset counties — falls under a heat advisory from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Wednesday. However, the weather service has also placed much of the state under an extreme heat watch for Thursday.
Heat index values, which measure how hot it feels to the human body when relative humidity is combined with the air temperature, are expected to reach up to 104 degrees during the heat advisory period, the weather service warns. They could reach 110 degrees Thursday, when the extreme heat watch is in effect.
Northern Oxford and Franklin counties, and central Somerset County, can expect a heat index value of up to 99 degrees Wednesday, according to the weather service.
The weather service advises people to drink plenty of fluids, stay in air-conditioned rooms when possible, avoid extended periods in the sun and check up on relatives and neighbors. It also warns not to leave young children and pets in unattended vehicles, as “car interiors will reach lethal temperatures in a matter of minutes.”
Cooling Centers
The Maine Department of Environmental Protection has also issued an air quality alert from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Wednesday along the coast from Kittery to Acadia National Park. The agency warns that ground-level ozone concentrations are expected to reach levels that are unhealthy for sensitive groups.
Ozone levels may reach “moderate levels” further inland, according to the Maine DEP, including in all of Androscoggin and Kennebec counties, as well as parts of Cumberland, Knox, Lincoln, Penobscot, Sagadahoc, Waldo, Washington and York counties.
Elevated ozone levels can pose a risk to children, older adults and people suffering from respiratory or heart diseases, according to the Maine DEP. Anyone exerting themselves outdoors may also experience health effects, which could include coughing, shortness of breath, throat irritation and mild chest pain.
Ozone levels were already climbing in southern New England on Tuesday, according to the Maine DEP, and winds are expected to bring those conditions to Maine on Wednesday.
The Maine DEP recommends that vulnerable populations avoid strenuous outdoor activities, keep windows closed, and circulate indoor air with fans or air conditioners. Those with asthma are also advised to keep quick-relief medication handy.
Particle pollution levels are also expected to be moderate across the state on Wednesday due to wildfire smoke, the Maine DEP said in its announcement Tuesday. Wildfires in Colorado, which have claimed the lives of three firefighters, had burned nearly 90,000 acres as of Tuesday, according to the Denver Post.
Maine could face up to $50 million in penalties next year due to errors in its payments for federal food benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Newly released data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture find that Maine’s error rate last year was nearly 11%, the bulk of which were overpayments. That’s in line with the U.S. average. But starting in October of next year, states with error rates above 6% must cover a portion of the SNAP benefits.
Anna Korsen, executive director of Full Plates, Full Potential, said the overpayments aren’t fraud — they’re human error. She said this new cost-shifting policy enacted last year under the Trump administration further complicates the SNAP application process.
“Instead, we could make this program more accessible and more efficient,” Korsen said. “And that would reduce the number of errors and also ensure that Mainers who are eligible for SNAP have access to it.”
She’s urging Congress to delay or reverse the policy under the farm bill that’s currently under consideration.
Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services said it’s taking steps to reduce the error rate, including modernizing its systems and hiring an additional 40 eligibility specialists.
This story appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.
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