Morristown, New Jersey-based Covanta has filed a federal lawsuit against Hennepin County, Minnesota. According to an article in the Star Tribune, Covanta, which has operated the Hennepin Energy Recovery Center (HERC) for 27 years, claims the county sabotaged negotiations over a new multimillion-dollar contract.

When Hennepin County bought HERC in the early 1990s, it inherited a contract with Covanta which runs through March 2018. When contract extension negotiations began two years ago and could not be resolved, the county put the work out to bid. The county recently accepted a proposed agreement from Maple Grove, Minnesota-based Great River Energy in August and gave Covanta a Sept. 22 deadline to agree to new terms or the it would award the contract to Great River Energy.

The 16-month, $25.5 million contract with Great River Energy is expected to start in 2018. According to the Star Tribune article, the suit argues that Hennepin County was required to negotiate a fair market service fee for an extension with Covanta for up to seven years in good faith. If negotiations failed, the county would have the right to solicit other proposals to determine a service fee that Covanta could “either take or leave.”

The suit says when Covanta gave notice in 2014 that it would extend the contract, initial negotiations resulted in the county proposing an entirely new agreement, according to the article. Over the next year, the Covanta claims the county refused to move on its proposal and failed to offer a counterproposal or new service fee.

The suit claims the county stopped negotiations with Covanta and solicited bids, accepting the contract with Great River Energy.

The article says, the lawsuit claims that the county sabotaged the dealings by insisting Covanta agree to an entirely new set of contract terms that were “much more burdensome than the existing agreement and that the county improperly drove negotiations far beyond the sole issue of deciding the fair market value of Covanta’s service fee for the extension period.”

The suit reportedly is asking for damages in excess of $75,000.