BIDDEFORD — People say it’s a smelly eyesore. They say it hurts the local economy. They say it threatens the health of people in Biddeford, Saco and beyond.

But if the Maine Energy Recovery Co. trash incinerator is so bad, why did people allow it to be built 13 years ago in the heart of downtown Biddeford and Saco, one of Maine’s most populated areas?

Time passes. People forget.

They forget that Biddeford and Saco officials competed for the right to host the trash-to-energy plant, and worried about which city would reap the lion’s share of economic benefits.

They forget that MERC was heralded as the answer to federal and state mandates to close leaking landfills, and to energy concerns wrought by the oil crisis of the 1970s.

And they forget that the two cities asked MERC to build the plant, expecting it to provide jobs in a stalled economy and revitalize a blighted downtown area.

But all of that doesn’t change the fact that many people, even MERC General Manager Ken Robbins, believe the plant was built in the wrong place.

“It was a mistake to put it here,” Robbins said during a recent tour of the plant. “But it’s here, and our job now is to do the best we can with what we have.”

Today, more than 20 years after Biddeford and Saco first talked about building a trash-to-energy plant, MERC and its host cities have reached a point of reckoning.

A recent corporate takeover has led to lawsuits, contract wrangling and the formation of Twin Cities Renaissance, a grass-roots group that aims to move MERC or shut it down.

“We are at a crossroads,” said Mark Johnston, a Saco city councilor and former mayor who has fought MERC for more than a decade. “If we don’t solve this problem soon, before our contract expires in 2007 and we lose our policing powers, we might as well establish downtown Biddeford and Saco as a trash zone.”

The current tempest has renewed interest in the power plays, botched decisions, blind trust and attempts at careful planning that built the plant.

The massive blue-steel building and its 234-foot smoke stack dominate the downtown, and some say the perception of Biddeford and Saco. Biddeford City Councilor James Grattelo this month bemoaned his city’s reputation as “Trash Town U.S.A.”

Few are willing to settle for company pledges to “do the best we can” any longer.

“People have had enough and won’t accept promises anymore,” said Mark Robinson, a founder of Twin Cities Renaissance. “But we understand that we can’t just say we don’t want MERC here. We have to help find alternatives.”

LOOKING BACK

Those involved in making the decisions that built MERC are angered by the harshness of 20-20 hindsight, even though many agree the plant is a problem.

“The choices we made were honest choices,” said Eric Cote, a Saco city councilor who was mayor in 1982 and 1983. “Of course, when something doesn’t work out, there are a lot of people to blame, and when something works, there are plenty of people to take credit.”

The MERC story began in the late 1970s, when the state Department of Environmental Protection began enforcing federal mandates to close leaking landfills, and Biddeford and Saco officials started exploring trash-disposal options.

Both cities were under pressure to close their dumps, which were polluting ground water. Federal and state agencies were pushing new trash-to-energy technology as the best way to get rid of solid waste.

Biddeford and Saco officials worried that a trash-burning plant might be built in the other community.

Neither wanted to lose the tax revenue or economic boost from a facility estimated to cost $6 million.

“There was a real rivalry between the two cities at the time,” Cote said, but they were desperate to get rid of the 23,000 tons of trash they produced each year.

Finally, in early 1982, the cities decided to work together. They focused on two Saco sites — Saco Island and the Saco Industrial Park — and three Biddeford sites — two former municipal dumps and a rundown factory area on Lincoln Street.

Later that year, the cities sought proposals from companies to build a trash-to-energy plant. They received four.

The cities were impressed by a proposal from the newly formed Kuhr Technologies Inc. (KTI) and General Electric to form the Maine Energy Recovery Co.

In late 1983, Cote and Biddeford Mayor Martin Rielly signed a contract with MERC.

By that time, the cities and MERC had tentatively settled on the 6.5-acre Lincoln Street site, but it wasn’t specifically named in the contract.

“We agreed with Biddeford to let KTI choose the site because we couldn’t agree on a site ourselves,” Cote said. “We didn’t think (Lincoln Street) was the best site, but it had to be built somewhere.”

MERC officials liked the Lincoln Street site because it was near the Saco River and a Central Maine Power Co. transfer station. The water would be used to cool the plant’s generators. The company planned to sell electricity to CMP.

In March 1984, MERC purchased the Lincoln Street site for $758,000. By then the plant’s estimated cost was up to $45 million. It would dispose of 60,000 tons of trash per year, including waste from 19 surrounding communities.

TROUBLE STARTS

Public concern over MERC began brewing soon after the Lincoln Street site was purchased.

In October, local businessman and former state legislator Plato Truman gave Biddeford Mayor Robert Farley a petition signed by 800 residents. They wanted a nonbinding referendum on the Lincoln Street site.

“The people, who are proud of their city, are horrified that a project of this magnitude could be put in this location and affect people for the next hundred years,” Truman told Biddeford councilors at the time.

The council killed the referendum for fear it might jeopardize the project.

“Where were these 800 people at the public hearings?” Councilor Richard Potvin asked. “There were fewer than 15 people at the last hearing. We’ve made commitments on this thing.”

Farley now believes MERC is a “disaster” because of its location. But at the time, a referendum was inconceivable.

“To back out at that point, we would have been sued for $3 million, and we still would have had a problem with closing our landfill,” Farley said. “You’ve got a gun at your head from the DEP and you don’t know what the hell to do. We ought to have a referendum now to see what people want, but they have to be told what it’s going to cost if we close that plant.”

Two months after the petition effort, the Biddeford Zoning Board of Appeals denied two variances for height and setback requirements.

Farley immediately moved to circumvent the roadblock to what was now a $105 million project.

In January 1985, the City Council passed a zoning amendment designed to fit the massive facility onto its downtown site.

Two weeks earlier, the DEP had given MERC its operating licenses. Construction was set to begin in late 1985. The plant started operating in April 1987.

ROOTS OF DISTRUST

MERC had problems from the start.

Despite General Electric’s promises, the plant stank. It was loud. It couldn’t process waste fast enough. Trash trucks snarled traffic and beat on local roads.

Dioxin-laced ash releases in the fall of 1988 covered sections of Saco with gray-white dust. Biddeford resident JoAnne Twomey, who is now a state representative, led candlelight vigils at the plant and helped to force a state-ordered $2 million retrofit.

In the early 1990s, MERC, KTI and General Electric settled a lawsuit initiated by Johnston, then Saco’s mayor, and Biddeford Mayor Bonita (Belanger) Pothier.

The companies agreed to pay Biddeford and Saco $5.1 million for odor, noise and traffic problems. MERC also agreed to give the cities 20 percent of plant’s value if it were ever sold.

But the distrust began even earlier.

It started, Cote said, before the plant was built, when he learned that the engineers Saco hired to shepherd MERC’s early planning also worked for KTI and General Electric. The firm was promptly fired.

After the plant started operating, several public officials who oversaw MERC’s development at various stages went to work for KTI, including former Biddeford City Planner David Katon.

Then in 1997, Biddeford resident Samuel Zaitlin sold his $22 million recycling business, Zaitlin & Sons, to KTI and became a senior vice president of the parent company. Zaitlin was chairman of the DEP Board when it granted operating permits to MERC in 1984.

With Zaitlin’s move, Pothier, the former Biddeford mayor who had sued MERC several years earlier, became general manager of Zaitlin & Sons and another KTI employee. She began working for Zaitlin in 1994.

In some cases, the distrust surrounding MERC has fostered conspiracy theories that are now part of local legend.

Some people look at MERC’s location and easy approval and wonder if Rielly, who is now deceased, had a personal stake in the project. Former friends and colleagues dispute that he could have benefited financially or otherwise.

“Martin Rielly was as honest as the day is long,” said Alan Casavant, a former Biddeford city councilor who supported MERC.

Perhaps most troubled by the innuendo is Zaitlin, who can’t understand why people think KTI bought his fast-growing company three years ago because he supported MERC in 1984.

“People can see whatever conspiracies they want,” Zaitlin said. “It makes as much sense to me as an assertion that I was involved in the Kennedy assassination.”

CURRENT TROUBLES

The legacy of distrust impacts how MERC is perceived today.

In December, Casella Waste Systems Inc. of Rutland, Vt., completed a yearlong, $500 million acquisition of MERC’s parent company, KTI Inc. of Guttenberg, N.J.

The cities promptly charged that it was an outright sale, not a merger as Casella asserts, and moved to claim 20 percent of MERC’s $70 million value.

They also filed lawsuits against the DEP, charging that the state agency transferred MERC’s operating permits to Casella without a thorough review.

Despite the ill will, today MERC fulfills most of its intended mission.

Each year it burns 250,000 to 300,000 tons of municipal waste from 17 southern Maine communities and from commercial trash haulers as far away as Texas.

Those communities enjoy remarkably low disposal fees — $33 per ton for Saco and Biddeford, and $55 per ton for the other 15 communities. Tipping fees at competing waste-disposal facilities are about $40 higher.

MERC also employs more than 80 people and pays property taxes of $1.2 million to Biddeford and $150,000 to Saco.

It also generates a nearly constant 22 megawatts of electricity — almost enough to serve the 39,000 people who live in Biddeford and Saco — and recycles 8,400 tons of noncombustible material.

And despite local health concerns, MERC consistently beats Clean Air Act standards. Tests show the plant’s emission-control system removes nearly all heavy metals, dioxins and furans — substances believed to cause health problems.

“Their record has been quite good,” said Alan Morrison, a DEP environmental specialist.

But Morrison acknowledged that emissions standards are based on how well current technology can filter potentially harmful particles from the smoke stream. The limits, infinitesimal as they are, are not based on how much dioxin is safe to breathe or how much mercury is safe to ingest.

A 1996 study said MERC created a risk of four additional cases of cancer per 1 million of the “most exposed individuals” living near the plant. Long-term health effects due to residual soil contamination were found to be “within acceptable levels.”

Words like that make JoAnne Twomey’s skin crawl.

“You can’t see the chemicals coming out of that stack, but they’re there,” Twomey said. “Our lungs have become our landfills. I realize we have to take care of our trash, but the problem with this plant is that we’re importing trash from other communities and all of the problems that come along with it.”

Twomey’s goal remains to shut down MERC. Twin Cities Renaissance is taking a more moderate approach, but they have the same hope. Some, like Cote, believe that if MERC can finally fix its odor problem, other concerns will diminish.

Company executives have promised the plant will be here for a long time to come. They also promise that things will be a lot more pleasant after a $2.5 million odor-control project is completed this spring.

They question the logic of trying to close a plant that has become so much a part of southern Maine’s infrastructure. They also question the idea of moving MERC, which has cost $122 million to build and retrofit over the years.

“You’re kind of marketing against yourself,” said KTI President Ted Hill, who lives in Old Orchard Beach. “Critics have done such a good job at profiling the plant as a nuisance, where are you going to move it where people would accept it?”

Twomey and Johnston say that’s exactly why MERC should be shut down. If it’s not good for Biddeford and Saco, it’s not good for anybody.

As illogical and insurmountable as it may seem to shut down MERC, there is a core group of people who are willing to give it a try. And they believe now more than ever, with a growing public consciousness about environmental issues, it is possible.

“I like to go through life as an optimist and really believe in possibilities,” Robinson said. “Unhappiness with the situation has reached a critical point. I believe people are capable of understanding that the opportunity costs of having this plant downtown are just too great.”