By SARAH DOUCETTE

Sarah Doucette lives in Whitefield and is a longtime North Country Alliance for Balanced Change board member. This op-ed was published Sept. 22, 2022 in the Concord Monitor.

Congratulations to the 256 NH representatives (80% of the House) and 11 senators who stood with the people of New Hampshire to defend our precious clean waters and override the governor’s veto of HB 1454. That bill could have protected us statewide from preventable landfill contamination.

Sadly, 12 senators followed the lead of Governor Sununu in declining to enact the legislation. The reasons given are a model of political obfuscation. Their suggested need for more study cannot stand in the face of neighboring states demonstrating long success using the same science-based regulations.

Nor can their resistance stand in the face of the devastating contamination of Merrimack’s waters from the Saint-Gobain site, the pollution of North Hampton’s waters by the Coakley landfill, and many other New Hampshire communities’ need for water remediation projects that prove terribly costly in both human suffering and millions of dollars.

Did you know that the NH Dept. of Environmental Services is involved in cleanup activities at 22 Superfund sites in New Hampshire? In addition, DES is trying to address damage around the state from PFAS, hazardous waste, petroleum products, MtBE (a gasoline additive) and other pollutants at various contaminated “brownfield” properties around the state. (See their website to learn more.)

The defeated bill would have averted the predictable contamination of more of our communities. Where are the loyalties of our legislators and our governor in opposing such protection?

They had a year to get the facts straight and participate in discussions and desired revisions before they chose to defeat this critical, protective legislation.

Citizens, businesses, municipal boards, and conservation organizations, including over 1,800 people who signed a petition for the veto override, stated their concerns and support through many months of consideration. The governor and dissenting legislators apparently believe they know better than the people they represent and feel free to disregard citizens’ experiences, insights and priorities in favor of their own purposes.

A New York Times article of Sept. 19 noted, “The power to set government policy is becoming increasingly disconnected from public opinion.”

On Sept. 18, National Public Radio asked for readers’ input noting, “polls show a majority of Americans in favor of something, whether it’s universal background checks on gun purchases, access to some form of legal abortion, or protections for Dreamers. Yet lawmakers can’t or won’t pass legislation supported by the majority of Americans.”

If we find our political decision-makers abdicate the privilege of public service for personal or private gains or corporate collusion, they should be held to account at the ballot box in November. Maybe aspiring candidates can serve the public good with more respect, integrity and transparency than what we are seeing in our districts now.

Let’s research our options to learn the values, records, responsiveness and loyalties of candidates up and down the ballot on Nov. 8. Let’s vote for those who will commit to voters’ priorities and honor the public’s voice in a truly democratic process.

Reason #1:

HB 1454 only impacts 1/7th of New Hampshire’s land mass

Yes, according to data published from the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, more than 85 percent of land in the state has relatively impermeable clay-rich soil under it that holds polluted groundwater in place. All of which would likely be permissible locations for development under this legislation.

Not to mention we only need about 0.08% of the land in NH to place our trash for the next 100 years!

Reason #2:

HB 1454 has NO impact on current landfills and expansion. 

Don’t believe the lobbyist double speak! HB 1454 specifically states: “Nothing in this paragraph shall be construed to prohibit the expansion of any landfills that are in operation at the time this paragraph takes effect.”

Reason #3:

HB 1454 is supported by thousands of Granite Staters and hundreds of businesses across the state. 

YOU can help ensure NH’s lakes and rivers are protected from landfill leachate and PFAS by joining us at a permitted, legal HB1454 veto override rally in Concord on September 15.

Details:

1. Where: New Hampshire State House in Concord. Parking is on street or in garages on School Street or State Street.

2. When: September 15th – Rally at 11.  People should arrive by 10:45.

3. What to wear: BLUE is the color.

4. What to bring: home-made signs that say OVERRIDE HB1454.

5. For more information: contact Tom Tower Tomtower658@gmail.com.

PFAS is now contaminating the Merrimack river, which today is a landing zone of landfill garbage juice “leachate” as it exits a NH water treatment center and is becoming a toxic danger for southern NH communities. Lets not let PFAS and other toxic pollutants contaminate any of NH’s other cherished lakes or rivers.

HB1454, which passed the house and senate with strong bi-partisan support, will establish a science-based buffer between landfills and waters based on groundwater flow. Today’s buffer is a meager and arbitrary 200′.

Call to Action—Petition & Rally Date:

HB 1454 passed with overwhelming bi-partisan support in both the NH House and Senate, but Governor Sununu vetoed it.

The bill will protect ALL of NH’s waters from foreseeable contamination leaks at new landfill sites statewide. It requires a simple test of gravel and bedrock water flow at any proposed site. (There is only a minimal 200’ buffer now between landfills and our lakes, rivers and wells.)

On Sept. 15, NH legislators will vote to overturn the governor’s veto of HB 1454. Our statewide Petition asks them to vote for the override and enact the updated regulations.

Here is the Petition link for you to send a message to NH House and Senate members. Clean water is essential for a thriving future in New Hampshire—for drinking and for recreation, for public health, for environmental and economic vitality.

Please take two minutes to SIGN THE Petition!

https://bit.ly/3PKyynu

Then, forward this email and ask all of your extended family, friends and colleagues to sign too, to help show overwhelming support for overturning the veto. Out-of-state signers committed to a healthy environment in NH are encouraged to sign as well.

Finally, please join the rally in Concord on Thursday, Sept. 15 at the State House. Mark your calendar now and we will be sending details soon. A huge turnout will again make the point to legislators that NH wants clean, safe water.

HB 1454 has become a bi-partisan beacon of common sense and stewardship. Many of you, with our broad coalition of citizens, businesses, visitors, conservation organizations and municipalities, have worked tirelessly to enact it. We can see HB 1454 pass into law, if everyone joins again to insist on the safety of our waters.

Thank you for all the ways you have supported the bill’s many successes. Let’s get the veto overturned!

Best regards,

NCABC Board of Directors

Sarah Doucette, Gary Ghioto, Erik Johnson, Mary Menzies, Wayne Morrison, Tom Tower

by Muriel S. Robinette, New Hampshire Bulletin
July 25, 2022

 When Casella Waste Management proposed building a new landfill in Dalton on land abutting Forest Lake State Park, some residents raised concerns that pollutants from the landfill could contaminate the lake. (Amanda Gokee | New Hampshire Bulletin)

The vast majority of land in New Hampshire is hydrogeologically suitable for landfill siting because it lies over the type of soils that transmit groundwater slowly toward our nearby lakes and rivers.

House Bill 1454 is a problem only for developers who attempt to site a landfill in sand and gravel formations that transmit groundwater very quickly toward nearby surface water bodies. The bill was vetoed by Gov. Chris Sununu last month, but proponents are hoping there will be broad enough support to override the veto when the full House and Senate reconvene.

New Hampshire’s surface geology was created about 15,000 years ago, when the continental glacier covered the entire state with upward of a mile thickness of ice. The glacier laid down a layer of glacial till, through which groundwater typically flows very slowly due to its composition of silt and clay materials. When the glaciers melted, sand and gravels called glacial stratified deposits were laid down locally in some areas. These deposits were mapped in New Hampshire by the United States Geological Society (USGS, Report 95-4100, 1995) because they are valued resources due to their ability to store groundwater and transmit it rapidly for water supply.

Why are these two common glacially derived deposits of interest with respect to HB 1454?Because they represent the two very different typical kinds of subsurface materials that are encountered in potential landfill sites. The glacial stratified deposits with rapid groundwater flow rates would require much larger setbacks to protect surface water from rapidly transmitted contamination, while the glacial till, generally characterized by much slower groundwater flow rates, would require much smaller setbacks.

HB 1454 establishes a five-year setback, based on the maximum measured speed of groundwater flow at the site, and allows operators to receive up to three years of “credit” (that is, site at least two years away from a lake or river) if they add additional engineering or other controls not required by regulation.

So, if HB 1454 was signed by the governor and became law, would that take “too much area” of the state out of consideration for new landfill sites, thus “very likely making it virtually impossible” to site another New Hampshire landfill in the future? The answer to this question is simple: no.

New Hampshire encompasses approximately 5.75 million acres, and according to the USGS mapping of stratified drift deposits, only 14 percent of New Hampshire’s area contains these rapid groundwater flow deposits. This leaves approximately 4.95 million acres in New Hampshire generally characterized by glacial till deposits that typically slowly transmit groundwater.

Setbacks from surface water due to HB 1454’s formula in large areas of the state (areas of glacial till) might be as short as a few hundred feet, hardly a burdensome setback. The accompanying map, prepared in 2011 by geologist Brandon Kernen (administrator of the Drinking Water and Groundwater Bureau at the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services), shows in yellow and red the 14 percent of New Hampshire that may be unsuitable for landfilling because of the rapid groundwater flow in the stratified drift aquifers.

If a proposed developer of a landfill finds that a potential site has rapid groundwater flow speeds on the order of several feet per day (sand/gravel), then by looking a few miles away in any direction, he or she may find a more appropriate site where the groundwater flow is at speeds of several feet per year. All that HB 1454 does is to steer applicants away from the 14 percent of the state and toward the other 86 percent.

MURIEL S. ROBINETTE

Muriel Robinette’s scientific career has spanned four decades from coast to coast in the United States, including time spent in academia, government, and private consulting. She now practices part time as a senior consultant at CALEX Environmental, LLC, an environmental and compliance consulting company in Colebook. Muriel’s consulting specialty is in forensic hydrogeology, which she practices in many states around the U.S. She is a licensed geologist in several states and currently services on the N.H. Professional Geology Licensing Board.

Republished with permission under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

We were disappointed with the governor’s decision on June 24 to veto HB 1454. This widely popular bipartisan legislation can protect groundwater throughout New Hampshire from poorly sited new landfills. 

Businesses and individuals from around the state and beyond have supported the bill in stunning numbers alongside conservation organizations including NH Sierra Club, Patagonia, Community Action Works, Conservation Law Foundation and our local partners, Save Forest Lake and Forest Lake Association.

This strong coalition will move forward together to press for an override of the governor’s veto.

As we continue to see, hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars spent remediating contaminants like PFAS, it is clear our state must prevent foreseeable pollution at every opportunity. HB 1454 is a simple, data driven, science-based measure that makes sense for the waste industry and for safeguarding environmental and public health.

There will be a pause in our work with legislators now, but NCABC will be planning next steps. In August we’ll be in touch with you again, rallying to ask State Representatives and Senators to override the veto and ensure proper siting requirements are met when our Department of Environmental Services issues permits with generational impacts. The override vote is expected in the fall.

As always, you have our warm thanks and appreciation for your responsiveness—the phone calls, emails, letters and generous donations that drive NCABC’s initiatives for smarter, safer waste management in our beautiful state.

Wishing you a wonderful summer,

NCABC Board of Directors
Wayne Morrison, Tom Tower, Mary Menzies, Eliot Wessler, Erik Johnson, Gary Ghioto, Sarah Doucette

June 20, 2022

Dear Governor Sununu,

In discussing your decision not to make a run for the Senate but rather to pursue another term as NH’s Governor, you said you chose that route because you “want to get things done”. As a citizen of NH and a person who spent his career working in corporations, I understand and applaud that focus and mindset.

I have lived and worked my entire adult life in southern NH and my wife of 45 years was born and raised in Littleton.  We are both graduates of the University of New Hampshire. We are proud and concerned citizens who want to see NH continue to thrive and especially, we want to see our government protect NH’s brand – clean air, clean water, open spaces, and attractive outdoor recreation opportunities.

I write to you today to ask your support for HB 1454, an important piece of legislation that passed both the House and the Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support. Protecting NH’s water bodies from contamination has become more and more urgent given our growing understanding of the health and safety issues associated with an increasing number of forever chemicals like PFAS.

Governor, I fully recognize that you and your administration didn’t create this problem – you inherited it. But I ask your help to “get this done” now, to ensure we take long overdue and much needed action to protect our water bodies and drinking water supplies for future generations.

For all intents and purposes, landfills are PFAS factories. HB 1454 is a smart, science based and narrow piece of legislation that will ensure any new landfill in the state will have an adequate setback distance from a perennial body of water to allow sufficient time for detection and remediation before leachate contamination occurs. The current one size fits all regulation of 200 feet is not only arbitrary but dangerous and completely inadequate.

Despite wild claims from the waste industry, HB 1454 will not raise property taxes, will not raise disposal costs, will not prevent future landfill developments when and if they become necessary, nor will it affect current or future capacity plans for NH’s waste needs. HB 1454 will simply ensure new landfill sites have an appropriate setback distance specific to the site’s location and the porosity of the soil and underlying bedrock conditions. The science is clear, the risks and impacts of contamination are all too familiar and the time to act is now.

Governor, I urge you to please support HB 1454. 

Respectfully,

Wayne Morrison

28 Brook Road

Mont Vernon, NH 03057

June 21, 2022 

Governor Chris Sununu 

State House 

patagonia Β Ο S Τ Ο Ν 

107 North Main Street Concord, NH 03301 

Greetings Governor Sununu,

The teams at Patagonia Boston and Patagonia Cambridge join our colleagues at North Country Alliance for Balanced Change in encouraging you to sign HB 1454 into New Hampshire law. 

Here at Patagonia, we hold a strong connection to the natural beauty that New Hampshire has to offer. Many of us spend our off days in the Granite State hiking, fishing, paddle boarding, and skiing. The pristine waters and quiet mountain alcoves are an ideal environment to recreate and take in the great outdoors. 

HB 1454 would protect New Hampshire’s watersheds from contamination due to new landfills. It will keep New Hampshire’s lakes and rivers clean and ensure that your waters are safe for recreation for years to come. It also protects the health of residents who depend on the water for their livelihoods and joy. 

Our mission statement reads, “We’re in business to save our home planet.” We believe strongly that business can and should protect our local environment. We hope you will sign HB 1454 into law to promote business that celebrates and protects the natural environment New Hampshire has to offer. 

Warm Regards, 

Kayla Goodale 

346 Newbury St 

Boston, MA 02115 

On Behalf of, 

Lucelis Celado, Johnny Castrejon, Alexander Shukis, Lauren Wanzek, Quinnee Valenzona, Andrew Durbin, Jack Link, Samuel Pettigrew, Zuri Adelekan, Payton Horton 

(617) 424-1776 FAX (617) 424-0621

On June 7, Dalton voters rejected a permanent zoning ordinance for their town. There was a huge turnout and 60% voted no.

This was a referendum on zoning, not the proposed Dalton landfill, and there was apparent concern about the loss of property rights if zoning was enacted.  

We had hoped that Dalton residents would approve a permanent zoning ordinance because we believe it would provide local control of development and also guidelines to maintain the high quality of life the town endorses in its master plan.  

NCABC does not expect this vote to affect our efforts to make sure that the Dalton landfill never gets permitted and built.  

Other developments:  

• HB 1454, the bill that would prevent siting landfills where they pose a significant risk of groundwater contamination, is still headed to Governor Sununu’s desk. He has expressed reservations about the bill, but we are giving him the facts that support enacting the bill along with showing him the broad commitment of businesses, conservationists and the public to clean water in NH.
• We hope he will sign the bill into law. If he vetoes HB 1454, NCABC will send you a call to action. We will be working statewide during the summer if we need to override a veto in the NH House and Senate.
   
• Last week Casella withdrew all of its pending permit applications to build a landfill in Dalton. This is a strong indication that their applications were weak and that our opposition to their plans was strong. Unfortunately, Casella has said it will resubmit permit applications later in 2022. We believe the company’s landfill plan will proceed, given potential earnings projected at about $1 billion from the Dalton site. NCABC will challenge future actions by Casella, as necessary, until the company recognizes the Dalton site is totally unsuitable for a new greenfield landfill.

 
Thank you! Our successes are your successes. We appreciate all of the calls to action and fundraising appeals that you have so generously supported. Your engagement will continue to be essential in the months ahead.
 
Please know that NCABC will continue to work hard with you and our growing group of allies throughout NH and beyond to protect the environment and the quality of life in NH’s North Country. 
 
NCABC Board of Directors
Sarah Doucette, Gary Ghioto, Erik Johnson, Mary Menzies, Wayne Morrison, Tom Tower, Eliot Wessler

For the past 3 years, NCABC has supported efforts to pass legislation which will protect NH from the horrible impacts of improperly sited landfills. 

In no small part thanks to New Hampshire residents and friends, we now have a bill: HB1454, which takes a giant leap forward by establishing a science-based landfill setback from lakes and waterways instead of the current arbitrary 200′. 

HB1454 is now in its final stages of preparation to be presented to governor Sununu with strong bi-partisan support from both the House and Senate. He has three options once he receives it:

1. Sign it into law – this is the preferred option of course, but he has stated in interviews he’s not favorable toward this due to tax implications. This is a misconception we are carefully addressing.
    
2. Veto it – strong bi-partisan support in an election year provides some political resistance against veto; however this is a possibility and the one we seek to avoid through this call to action. 
    
3. Do nothing, and it becomes law on the sixth day. 

How can you help?

1. Make a phone call (great!); send a post card (even better!) – perhaps with a scene of a NH lake or river; or send an e-mail (still great!) with a short, postitive note to Gov. Sununu asking and thanking him for preserving NH clean waters by signing HB1454 into law. 
   
   A physical paper message is more impactful than electronic messages, but all are part of the public record. Also, please emphasize the benefit to all NH waters, rather than spotlighting the North Country.
   
   Office of the Governor
   State House
   107 North Main Street
   Concord NH 03301
   
   603.271.2121
   
   governorsununu@nh.gov
    
2. Spread the word to friends & family and NH business owners to do the same. A message from a NH business has tremendous impact on the governor.
    
3. Tag @GovChrisSununu with a politely and positively-worded social media post on Instagram, FaceBook or Twitter. These will be recognized by his office and passed along.
    
4. Access the “Share My Opinion” page on the Governor’s website. This is a form where the public can ask that he support and sign HB1454. You’ll want to also request a written response from the Governor’s office. 
   
   
5. Write a letter to the editor of your local paper, and post a link on your social network account.

Thank you so much, once again, for your support.