Every day, dozens of trucks loaded with waste drive through the gates of Juniper Ridge Landfill in Old Town.
Near the entrance, they’re greeted by a sign listing banned items, including refrigerators, propane tanks and dead animals. And at the bottom, in large red letters, is a warning: “Juniper Ridge Landfill only accepts waste generated in Maine.”
That rule — no waste from other states — has been a guiding principle of Maine’s trash laws since the late 1980s. It’s partly why the state even bought Juniper Ridge in 2004.
It’s also misleading: Other states have sent hundreds of thousands of tons of construction waste to the state dump over the years.
Massachusetts is the biggest exporter of all that wood, brick, asphalt and other debris, much of which is banned from its own landfills. The imports have accounted for almost a third of what’s buried in Maine’s state landfill in some years.
“Anything in there has to be ‘generated’ in Maine. Well, that’s kind of a trick word. It doesn’t mean all of this was thrown away for the first time in Maine,” says Ed Spencer, an Old Town resident who lives less than two miles from the dump. “The whole thing was a scam, and now it’s just grown and it’s become an established waste pathway.”
More than 60% of the licensed space at Juniper Ridge has now been used up, according to state records.
Along with the steady imports of construction debris, the landfill has…
