By Lee Burnett
Organizers say they are more than halfway to securing enough signatures on a petition to force a citywide vote on the biosolids gasification plant proposed for south Sanford.
They had collected 570 signatures earlier this week, with signing opportunities scheduled at three local businesses in the next 10 days. May 13 is the deadline for them to collect at least 736 validated signatures to qualify for inclusion on the ballot. Their goal is to collect 1,000 signatures, in case some are rejected.
“It’s been a pretty positive experience,” said Dax Morrow, a spokesperson for Stop the Sludge.
Stop the Sludge had originally planned to circulate two petitions – one calling for repeal of a City Council-authorized Tax Increment Financing district and another calling for a 180-day moratorium. Organizers decided to scrap the repeal of the TIF, which the council authorized for multiple properties in south Sanford, including the site on Cyro Drive proposed for the Aries Clean Technologies plant. (City Manager Steven Buck pointed out earlier that repeal of the TIF would have no impact on the development of the Aries site because none of the TIF money would have flowed back to Aries via a credit enhancement agreement.)
The current petition calls for a 180-day moratorium to evaluate potential impacts and whether city environmental safeguards are sufficient to handle the novel technology.
Among other things, the petition calls for:
- an independent assessment of potential air quality impacts
- an evaluation of potential impacts to surface water and groundwater
- an assessment of traffic impacts
- a review of operational track record and operational data from comparable facilities.
The specific city safeguards that would be reviewed for their sufficiency are the city’s
land use ordinances, zoning regulations, site plan review standards and environmental protection provisions.
Organizers say it is paramount to vet the company’s claims to outside analysis. “Can you independently replicate your data?” asks spokesperson Nicole Gorsun.
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.
The company says the Sanford plant will be larger than the one in Linden and will operate at higher temperatures. Their environmental consultants, Epsilon Associates, say the higher temperatures will result in the destruction of 99 percent of the toxic PFAS chemicals emitted from the stack.
Critics question the destruction claims and raise questions about the potential for leaks, contamination of groundwater and the Mousam River, especially in event of superstorms, and the adequacy of the company’s financial resources and operating competency. “It’s telling that there are so many concerns,” Gorsun said.
Signing opportunities for Stop the Sludge’s petition are this Saturday, 8 am to noon, at the Sanford Farmers’ Market in Central Park; Tuesday, May 5, and Monday, May 11, from 4 to 7:30 pm at Knots & Bolts Creating Co., 911 Main St., and noon to 3 pm next Saturday, May 9, at River Junction Brewing, 1491 Main St. Or email stopthesludgesanfordsanford@gmail.com and an organizer will meet with you individually.
The post Foes of Aries Project Expect to Reach Signature Goal appeared first on Sanford Springvale News.
