Bob Tweedie’s “Mount Trashmore” letter (BDN June 20) is right on in asking what the powers that be were thinking to allow that landfill, “Mount Trashmore,” to be built along I-95 in Hampden. The same powers that be are doing it again, building an even bigger mountain of trash in West Old Town. We’re calling it Mount Baldacci. It will be the largest landfill in New England, and it’s owned by the State, so there is no doubt about where responsibility lies.

Mount Baldacci is less visible than Mount Trashmore, but it will be just as full of out of state trash. The State hired Casella Waste Systems to operate it, the same company that owns Mount Trashmore, the same company that owns the MERC trash incinerator in Biddeford that business groups and residents in Biddeford and Saco are hoping to shut down. According to Sen. Barry Hobbins, D-Saco, two-thirds of the trash arriving at the MERC plant is from out of state.

Casella also owns a plant in Lewiston where out of state construction and demolition debris is chipped up as fuel for misnomered “biomass boilers.” There are five such facilities in Maine already licensed by Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection to burn this dirty fuel-a total of 1.4 million tons-which leaves behind 70,000 tons of toxic ash and 560,000 tons of non-burnables, all to be landfilled in Maine and mislabeled by DEP as “Maine waste.”

As Dana Snowman of Alton keeps reminding us: “They are filling our state full of out of state trash and lying through their teeth about it.”

Pam Bell

Milford