The company, through its Browning-Ferris unit, had been serving Maine. The current situation of having one vendor handle and dispose of about 99 percent of Maine's bagged and boxed medical waste is a major concern of hospitals, he added. Each proposal would involve establishing a working consortium of hospitals to keep costs down. Containing costs and public health issues are at the top of the hospital's medical waste disposal agenda, he added. Scott Austin, of the DEP's Bureau of Remediation and Waste Management, said a state law prohibits the construction of new commercial waste disposal facilities.
Hospitals are exempt from the provisions since they are noncommercial, nonprofit entities.
They also have additional expenses for getting rid of regular waste that goes to municipal landfills and regional burning facilities. The first proposal to handle medical wastes in-state calls for placing a large treatment machine at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, and a smaller machine at Maine Medical Center in Portland. The third proposal, which is the least expensive since there is no shredding of waste, would place 10 small processing machines in hospitals throughout the state and one medium-sized machine in Portland and one in Bangor. Waste also would be buried in landfills. May. In another development, Stericycle announced last week that a Lawrence, Mass., incinerator owned by the company was closed permanently because of prohibitive environmental upgrade costs.