By Dan Marks

As Rob noted in the President’s message, we descended on Augusta to carry our message (and our pipes) to our legislators. We had a strong group of members and had many great conversations. We had the opportunity to showcase our recently completed white paper, calling for the need to develop long-term sustainable solutions to our biosolids crisis. Overall, it was a successful event, and we generally felt that it was more effective than the previous off-site events. We must keep the momentum and take the good word directly to our representatives! Through collaborating with our neighboring New England government affairs group, we have picked up some other ideas to make our legislative event even more effective next year. Stay tuned!

The white paper mentioned previously calls for a stakeholder group with diverse backgrounds and interests to come together to find solutions to biosolids management. Essentially, our position is that we can’t come up with our own ideas for what to do with our residuals- we need to collaborate to find the solution, taking on a holistic approach. MEWEA will be working to support DEP, along with the Bureau of General Services, Environmental NGOs and others in convening a group to find robust, diverse outlets for our biosolids. 

Now for some bills of note:

• LD 25 – “the sludge bond” – seeks to support digestion and dewatering projects that reduce the volume of biosolids to be disposed of.  After much hand-wringing and behind the scenes shenanigans, the original proposal was reduced to a $20M bond and will be included as part of a multi-part bond package that now must go to the floor and receive 2/3 support. So, that is the next hurdle to climb. We all know how far $20M goes in this effort (answer: not very far at all) – but still, it could be a good opportunity to call your local rep and ask for support (especially if they are a Republican – oh yeah, its political).
• LD 2070 – this was another one of those bills that changed entirely as the Environment and Natural Resources Committee amended it. Originally, it was a prohibition on expanding landfills into wetlands. Despite the unworkability of the original proposal (when did that ever stop the legislature?), we testified in a neutral position on the bill and instead used it to highlight the State’s need to come up with a long-term disposal plan given Juniper Ridge Landfill is almost at capacity (expected to be full in 2028 without an expansion – the application for which is currently tied up in court).  So, the Committee amended the original bill by replacing all of it. The most salient piece of that new bill for us is that it appears we will have an increased testing frequency required on our sludge before it is shipped out. The bill also requires DEP and Bureau of General Services (“BGS”, official owner of the landfill) to go through a stakeholder process to plan for the future of waste management out to 2050.  We will be working with the DEP to support this effort in any way that we can. 

Finally, we are working with the film makers of the PWD-focused documentary “Unless Something Goes Terribly Wrong” to try to strike a deal to make the movie available to all our members. Stay tuned for this opportunity!

As always, if you are interested in getting more involved in Government Affairs, please reach out to Dan Marks at dmarks@falmouthme.org