The Biddeford and Saco City Councils recently voted to form yet another committee to deal with the Maine Energy Recovery Company waste incinerator, in the wake of the dissolution of the governor’s task force on MERC. It appears to be another blow to the effort to get Maine Energy out of town.

For more than 20 years now, this kind of wrangling has been going on between those who want the incinerator out of downtown and those who have no intention of moving it.

The impetus for forming this new ad hoc committee was the change of tactics by the now-defunct Maine Energy task force that was appointed by Gov. John Baldacci. The group, which was initially charged with developing an exit strategy for the incinerator, had changed its focus to a proposal that would move the plant’s front end processing of waste from Biddeford to Westbrook.

Now the City of Saco has withdrawn its application for federal grant money that would have made a retrofit of the plant possible, enabling it to generate power by burning compressed pellets of trash. Without this capability, the proposal for retrofitting the plant to burn pellets has suffered a major setback, though other funding options will be pursued.

It’s clear to see, after years of discussion, that the reason the task force originally changed gears ”“ moving beyond the original goal of simply ushering the facility out of town ”“ is because this approach won’t work. No group in the past two decades has been able to convince Maine Energy to do so and residents haven’t been willing to buy it out.

The task force took the best steps possible to allow the communities to coexist peacefully with an inappropriately placed plant. Since this diplomatic effort has failed, prospects for success are low for a committee that is outwardly biased against the plant’s very existence.

Maine Energy is a private entity whose managers have demonstrated two things: They’re willing to work with the public, but they will not accept the “all-or-nothing” approach of longtime Maine Energy foes like Biddeford Mayor Joanne Twomey and Saco’s Mark Johnston, who simply want to bid the plant good riddance.

No one would argue that the incinerator is in a good location and most would agree that its odors hinder redevelopment of the downtown. But a private business that is providing jobs and significant tax revenue cannot just be kicked out of town.

Twomey’s concerns about the incinerator ”“ truck traffic, pollutants, odor ”“ are all valid. But maintaining the task force would have been the most effective course of action to deal with these concerns rather than forming a new circle to beat the “get out of town” drum.

Local officials need to take a positive tack in staying on top of what’s going on at Maine Energy ”“ those efforts in the past have led to better odor controls and EPA fines. A group whose only focus is “closure or bust” is likely to get nowhere, as we’ve seen over the plant’s entire lifetime.

Maine Energy will only leave when it is in its interest to do so. Officials of Biddeford and Saco should continue the patient work needed to bring this goal about.