Penobscot Energy Recovery Company Files Appeal Challenging Fiberight's New Facility Permits

A summerlong public relations battle between two competing trash-to-energy companies is heading to court.

Maryland-based Fiberight and its Ellsworth partner, the Municipal Review Committee, or MRC, want to build a biogas, organic trash disposal facility in Hampden. But on Friday, the Penobscot Energy Recovery Company, or PERC, filed an appeal in Kennebec County Superior Court, challenging the validity of the state permits issued for the project by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.

In a prepared statement, PERC spokesperson Ted O’Meara said the state’s solid waste and air emission licenses to the proposed Hampden project had moved forward “despite serious deficiencies in the record and in contravention of existing statutory and regulatory requirements.”