By Dawn De Busk

Staff Writer

CASCO — The Town of Casco will crack down on local waste hauling companies that do not take the collected household waste to ecomaine in Portland.

The employees of ecomaine will be responsible for policing the trash-hauling companies coming from communities that contract with ecomaine, according to Casco Town Manager Dave Morton.

“They will tell us if a particular hauler is not” taking loads of household trash to the ecomaine facility, he said.

Town staff and elected public officials will not have to worry about that end of it, he said.

The Casco Board of Selectmen voted 4-0 to support its agreement with ecomaine by taking over the task of enforcement.

If any Casco-based trash-hauling company sells household waste to a business other than ecomaine, the town will fine the company up to $100 a day for each day the company took trash elsewhere. Repeated violations will result in the revocation of the trash-hauling license.

“If they do it repeatedly, they will lose their license,” Morton said.

All trash haulers must be licensed by Aug. 24. The owners of those companies can contact the Casco Town Office, 627-4515, for more information about the licensing process.

Morton stressed that this does not apply to small-sized operations that can bring loads of household trash to the Casco-Naples Transfer Site.

The new mandate applies to the companies that own and operate large equipment. Falling into the category of businesses that need to be licensed are the waste haulers that have compactors inside the truck, or those companies that drop off and pick up large dumpsters, Morton said.

“Those haulers need to be licensed,” he said.

The decision is in accordance with Casco’s Solid Waste Ordinance, Morton said.

“We are required to make sure all our household waste goes to ecomaine,” he said.

The benefit is lower tipping fees, he said.

A tipping fee is a prorated cost for loads weighing less than one ton, which is 2000 pounds.

According to ecomaine’s website, the Waste-To-Energy (WTE) plant “receives trash identified as unrecyclable and converts it at 2000 degrees Fahrenheit to energy in the form of electricity.”

“The ecomaine WTE plant processes about 175,000 tons of trash a year and, from that process, generates enough steam to create about 100,000 to 110,000 megawatt-hours of electricity annually — enough to power about 14,000 homes for a year,” the website said.