NORWAY — Nothing will change for Norway and Paris residents if the Oxford County Regional Recycling Corp. is dissolved by voters at the polls on Nov. 8, according to Selectman Warren Sessions Jr.

Sessions is the general manager of the corporation and Norway-Paris Solid Waste.

On July 13, 12 of the 15 municipalities involved with the corporation voted to dissolve it.

Sessions member towns are Norway and Paris, Otisfield, Bethel, Hanover, Denmark, Greenwood, Woodstock, Milton Township, Hebron, Newry, Livermore, Gilead, Lincoln Plantation and Upton.

Discussions about dissolution began in 2014 after the corporation lost two towns to single-stream recycling, and others began to consider following suit.

Sessions said that “each town (in the corporation) has to hold a referendum vote, the way the local agreement is written out, to make sure that’s what the people want.”

“The (corporation) used to be made up of 21 towns that all recycled the same way: multi-sort,” Sessions said. “There were a few drop-outs who wanted to go to single-stream, and then some of the other towns went single-stream without dropping out of the corporation. It makes it unfair for the towns who are still bringing their recyclables to the OCRRC.”

The multi-sort system requires residents to place recyclables into individual bins according to their material, meaning paper, cardboard, glass and other materials would be sorted separately.

Single-stream recycling allows residents to put all of their recyclables into one container, where they’re compacted and shipped to Lewiston.

Sessions said it’s important for Norway and Paris residents to realize that “nothing is going to change for them” even if the corporation dissolves after the November vote.

“The Norway-Paris Solid Waste board agreed to continue doing multi-sort recycling for residents from each town,” Sessions said. “They’ve agreed to keep the same people, so nobody loses their jobs. Unless we told them about it, the citizens wouldn’t notice the difference.”

He said that Norway and Paris represent more than 50 percent of the corporation.

“We hope to end up with all the machinery, plus a few extra dollars to help us operate for the first year,” Sessions said.

He said that he anticipates Norway-Paris Solid Waste will be better for the towns “because we won’t be spending as much money to get the material from the outlying towns to the station.”

As general manager of both the corporation and Norway-Paris Solid Waste, Sessions said that he originally did not take a position on which direction residents should lean when voting at the ballot.

However, with the November vote approaching, he said that he has “woken up to the fact that the (corporation) is a municipal entity that has run its course, and like all municipal entities, it’s dying a hard death.”

The Norway Board of Selectmen will hold a public hearing at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 20.

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