LEWISTON — The city’s landfill will continue taking ash from Auburn’s Mid-Maine Waste Action Corp. incinerator, councilors agreed Tuesday night.
Councilors renewed the ash-for-trash deal with MMWAC that sends Lewiston solid waste to the incinerator for a discounted rate. In exchange, Lewiston takes all of the ash from the MMWAC incinerator for a discount.
“This partnership is really a good deal for both parties,” Executive Director Joe Kazar said. “It saves them quite a bit of expenditures because they do not have to build new landfill cells as frequently. And the ash is much easier to deal with. They don’t have blowing litter that they may have had while they landfilled the city’s trash.”
The deal began in 1997. The current agreement is set to expire in June 2017 and the renewal is good for five years.
According to the deal, Lewiston’s solid waste is sent to the Auburn incinerator and Lewiston pays a tipping fee of $42.50 per ton.
All the ash from the incinerator is sent to Lewiston’s River Road landfill. That includes the ash from Lewiston’s trash as well as the ash from all of MMWAC’s incinerator operations.
“For MMWAC, it offers us a below market rate for ash disposal,” Kazar said. “And with Lewiston being a sizable community, it brings in a sizable amount of trash that really anchors the plant. It’s (a) steady, year-round source of trash that keeps the incinerator working at peak efficiency.”
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