PARIS — The Planning Board voted Wednesday night to approve a proposal from a North Carolina‑based solar company to build a solar farm on the capped AC Lawrence Sludge Landfill off Kilgore Road.
Richard Jordan, senior project developer at Paddle Energy, a North Carolina‑based company with offices in Bangor and Yarmouth, and Lauren Leclerc, an environmental consultant with Flycatcher LLC, told the board the project, called Baxter, would produce about a megawatt of solar energy.
“We are proposing to use the existing landfill in its entirety,” Jordan told the board.
Jordan said an existing gravel access road maintained by the town would provide access to the solar site, though Paddle Energy would build a small extension to it.
According to the application, the site would connect directly to Central Maine Power Co. lines northwest of Kilgore Road.
The landfill was used by AC Lawrence Leather Co., a now‑defunct business based in Peabody, Massachusetts, as a sludge disposal site until at least 1980.
According to a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency profile on similar sludge lagoons on Oxford Street, sludge was removed from the lagoons and placed in nearby landfills, “which was later capped under state regulations and the site backfilled with clean fill.”
Paris Code Enforcement Officer Chris Summers said he has visited the landfill twice in the past four years to evaluate the condition of the cap.
“When you have a landfill, the DEP often looks for spots where the ground has collapsed because either water is washing down through, and there was nothing,” Summers said. “The site looks pretty good. Everything that I’ve seen says, yeah, this is holding up really well.”
Jordan said the panels will be placed on ballasts, which will be filled with concrete or rock.
“They can be placed directly on the landfill without impacting the surface,” he said.
Chief Mark Blaquiere of the Paris Fire Department said another Paddle Energy–owned solar site at a former landfill caught fire in the past few months. Jordan said the new location would have a Knox Box — a small safe containing keys so firefighters can access the site during an emergency.
“We will coordinate for training of the Fire Department staff as well,” Jordan said.
Summers noted that solar farms are a good use for landfills, which can be difficult to develop for other purposes.
“There’s not a lot you can do with the landfill without limiting availability for anything else,” he said. “A lot of people honestly aren’t interested in the landfill because you don’t know what is in there.”
The Select Board is scheduled to walk the property Wednesday, Feb. 18, and a public hearing on the project is set for Feb. 25.
Correction: This story was updated Feb. 17 to reflect this story was about a Paris Planning Board meeting, not a Select Board meeting as originally reported.
