“Why can’t we have Linden up and running and stable for a while and then come here?” asked Rebecca Andrews of Springvale. Photo: Lee Burnett
“We’re not going to make those mistakes again,” said Aries CEO Jon Cozens, center. Also pictured are Dale Raczynski, principal of Epsilon Associates, with Nikhil Garg, co-founder and general partner.
Photo: WSSR-TV
By Lee Burnett
Air and water concerns dominated a much-anticipated meeting April 2 on plans to build a novel biosolids gasification plant in Sanford to relieve a regional crisis in dwindling landfill space.
Speaker after speaker denounced Aries Clean Technologies’ project, drawing applause more than 30 times. None of the 32 speakers supported the plan, though some were not overtly critical. More than 200 people attended the session at the Sanford Performing Arts Center, which stretched on for nearly three hours.
It’s unclear what effect the early demonstration of public opinion will have on the project. City councilors say they have no say in the project. And Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection has announced it will hear only expert testimony at a pending public hearing on two state licenses needed for the project.
Aries is advertising itself as a savior of Maine’s sewer sludge problem. Maine banned land application of sludge in 2022, after a disastrous experiment lasting several decades, in which the state encouraged farmers to spread sewer sludge on their fields, only to discover 10 years ago that PFAS, so-called forever chemicals, were contaminating groundwater. Sewer sludge is now accumulating quickly in a few landfills, creating a statewide crisis. Aries says it has a technology that would reduce Maine’s volume of sewer sludge by 90 percent, but its prototype plant in Linden, NJ, has never operated efficiently and is currently shut down as the company restructures debt and retrofits a better front-end dryer system.
Aries CEO Jon Cozens took personal responsibility for the rocky start in Linden that has led to layoffs of 20-plus employees.
“I did fail. I made mistakes,” he said. “We mis-designed that plant. We picked the wrong dryer. We added too much debt on the plant that we couldn’t afford. All of those things we’re going to do differently. Ultimately, our investors paid the price … We have the capital. We’re not going to make those mistakes again.”
Company officials insist its core technology – a gasifier and a thermal oxidizer – have always performed flawlessly. In the multi-stage process, biosolids are dried in the above-mentioned equipment to drive off moisture, then cooked in the gasifier’s 1,200-degree airless environment to produce biochar, a coal-like substance useful to the concrete industry. The off-gases are then further cooked in the thermal oxidizer at 2,200 degrees, which the company claims would destroy 99 percent of PFAS. Improvements in the design of the Sanford plant include the better dryer, said to be an already proven technology in other industries, and the higher operating temperature of the gasifier – 400 degrees hotter than the Linden plant’s design temperature, officials said.
Company representatives’ assertion that their technology is a solution to a solid waste problem was a hard sell to the audience. Many speakers questioned specific aspects of the operation, such as why the condensate from the dryer would be discharged untreated into the city’s wastewater system. Answer: it already meets drinking water standards. What are spill containment strategies, especially given incidents of super storm-induced flooding? Answer: The biosolids, even unprocessed, are in a solid form that doesn’t “spill,” and the plant would suspend operations in the event of a natural disaster.
Judy Gibbs, a onetime biologist with experience with polymers, questioned the company’s PFAS destruction claim, citing EPA research purportedly showing that temperatures of 5,000 degrees would be needed to destroy PFAS. Dale Raczynski, a principal of the environmental engineering company Epsilon Associates, disagreed and invited her to share her sources.
“All of the data that we’ve seen said 2,200 degrees would oxidize these materials,” he said.
At another point, Raczynski got into a heated exchange with Kristen Davis of Wells, who repeatedly challenged the destruction data from the Linden plant because it “never sustained continuous operations.” Raczynski said she is taking the data out of context and the reason the company has never achieved a 99 percent destruction rate is because of the Linden plant’s lower operating temperature of 1800 degrees.
Former Mayor Tom Cote said he remains skeptical of the company’s reliance on “simulation and testing and modeling.”
“What I don’t hear is five, 10 years of experience in an up-running factory that you can pull charts and graphs to show us what actually happened,” he said. “We shouldn’t really have to trust you. That’s my issue with this project. We should know before we go down this road.”
He also asserted the image of sludge is going to be an obstacle to recruiting new business to Sanford.
Rebecca Andrews, who described herself as “an everyday person” from Springvale, said she “really, really” wants Aries to be a PFAS savior, but implored the company to develop a track record first before asking another community to trust them. “How do we trust what’s right? It’s not proven technology at this scale. Why can’t we have Linden up and running and stable for a while and then come here?”
CEO Cozens asserted that lessons have already been learned and that further delay would only worsen the biosolids problem. “We definitely, internally, feel we have learned enough from Linden that when the dryers are replaced, it will restart,” he said. Cozens also asserted that “Ultimately, it (Linden) will be up and running before Sanford is operational.”
Several speakers took offense at the fact that Sanford was chosen for an unproven technology. Tess Smith of Springvale noted the city’s bitter experience recovering from the departure of the Goodall mills in the 1950s that left the town with “a huge mess” and later a mill fire that the city had to clean up.
“So, if you’re feeling the anger, that’s probably the anger that they have,” said Smith.
Springvale resident Pam Cote said she was bothered that several city officials provided video testimonials for the project on the Aries website, while hearing privately from city councilors that “the city has no jurisdiction or responsibility” for the project. “If that’s the case, you should not positively be promoting this,” she said. “… you’re here to represent us, and so you should be advocating at the state, and you should be listening to the citizens, and not just here.”
Michelle Sheppard, who has 25 years of banking experience, said she is skeptical of Aries’s credit worthiness. “What are you seeing that I’m not?” she asked Nikhil Garg of Spring Lane Capital, one of the early financial backers. Garg responded that the magnitude of the biosolids problem and disposal costs “massively increasing” creates an opportunity for long-term sustainable, cost-effective solutions.
“And so, we see that. That’s compelling to us and others. If this project doesn’t go forward, it’s only going to get worse,” he said.
Jordan Matthews of Shapleigh asked for a specific timeline on rehiring laid-off employees of the Linden plant. In response, Kari Mueller, vice president of operations, explained: “We’re in the process of figuring out exactly what we need to do that at the facility and how long it takes. We expect to have that in the next month.”
John Henkelman worried that financing of the plant may suffer as other disposal options become available and asked for a 30-year commitment to accept biosolids from Sanford. Mark Lyons replied, “We are committed to take Sanford’s sludge and we are committed to taking Maine’s sludge first … The other options you mentioned, they don’t destroy PFAS.”
Toward the end of the session, Jackie Elliot, an environmental health and justice advocate from North Waterboro, saluted audience and speakers for being knowledgeable and respectful.
“I want to commend this community tonight,” she said. “You’ve done yourselves proud. You’ve come out. You’re informed. You’ve asked the important questions. You’ve shone a lot of light on what is involved here.”
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