Author: Erik Johnson

Here are the latest developments in our fight to stop Casella Waste Management from siting a massive 180-acre dump in Dalton next to Forest Lake and Forest Lake State Park – along with what you can do to help ensure this dump never threatens our quality of life.    

CASELLA’S “NO STRINGS OFFER” TO DALTON GENERATES PUSHBACK

On Jan. 13, Dalton resident and “Vote No on Zoning” advocate Don Mooney approached the Dalton Select Board with the offer of a “no strings attached” gift of $50,000 to $100,000 from the personal philanthropic fund of Casella CEO John Casella.  Mooney made the offer after communicating with a Casella official. 

Not surprisingly, there was skepticism that the offer was100% philanthropic since it comes in the middle of Casella’s attempts to plant a dump in Dalton. 

The next day brought a sort of “clarification” from John Casella, who said “We do not communicate donations or other offers of financial assistance to communities through individual citizens because it can result in confusion as it did here.”  He didn’t withdraw or deny the offer, though. 

Save Forest Lake founder Jon Swan filed a complaint against Casella with the NH Attorney General for “improper gifting” and “influence peddling.”  Said Swan: “The first thing that comes to mind is this certainly seems like a conflict of interest, and some could question it as almost being an improper payment to the town, in essence for a favor.” 

Then came a counter-offer from Whitefield resident (and NCABC board member) Eliot Wessler who offered to personally match any Casella donation up to $100,000.  In a Jan.16 letter to the editor of the Caledonian Record, Wessler said “All Casella needs to do is pledge not to build a landfill in the town of Dalton.” 

It turns out that even thinking about accepting the money wouldn’t be easy for Dalton.  Select Board Chair Jo Beth Dudley says that accepting more than $10,000 in unanticipated revenue would trigger a public hearing and questions for town legal counsel and the NH Municipal Association. 

What you can do:  Write a letter to the editor of the Caledonian Record (news@caledonianrecord.com), Coos County Democrat or Littleton Courier (tara@salmonpress.news) with your take on this “offer.” 

WHITEFIELD RESIDENTS COLLECT SIGNATURES FOR ANTI-DUMP WARRANT ARTICLE    

If it’s passed at the Mar. 10 Whitefield Town Meeting, the warrant article would declare the town’s opposition to the Dalton landfill, citing potential negatives like Forest Lake degradation, heavy truck traffic and falling property values.  

What you can do:  If you’re a registered Whitefield voter and want to sign the petition for the warrant article, contact Sarah Doucette at sdoucette58@gmail.com.  But please act fast:  deadline for submitting the petition is Tues. Feb. 4.  If you aren’t able to sign the petition, be sure to vote for the warrant article at Town Meeting on Tues. Mar. 10. 
 

DUMP CONTROL BILLS ADVANCE   

Thanks to bipartisan work by NH legislators plus the Forest Lake Association, Save Forest Lake and NCABC, two pieces of dump control legislation will be up for a vote in the NH House this year.  The bills – now being marked up in committee — aim to enhance local control and protect the NH environment from dump negatives like foul odors, wetlands and water quality degradation, scavengers, noise, heavy truck traffic and garbage trucked in from out of state. 

House Bill 1319 prohibits new landfills near state parks, national parks and US Department of Agriculture forest land.  

House Bill 1422 puts a moratorium on building new privately-owned for-profit landfills and expanding existing ones until the state can study the creation of municipal waste districts to handle NH’s waste needs. What you can do:  As soon as the bills are released from committee we’ll ask your help in writing letters to your legislators.  We’ll provide language and fact sheets to help you in your letter-writing. 

CASELLA LEACHATE SPILL    

A recent spill of a potentially dangerous soup of landfill liquids and chemicals is another reminder of how dumps put local communities at risk. 

At 3 am on Dec. 27, a tanker truck full of leachate from the Casella dump in Coventry, VT collided with a garbage truck on Route 5 near the Black River.  The result was an 8,000 gallon spill that almost emptied the tanker and contaminated soil off Route 5.  Luckily the leachate doesn’t yet seem to have reached nearby well heads or the Black River, which drains into Lake Memphremagog, the water source for 175,000 Canadians.  There’s a Vermont State Police investigation ongoing.

What you can do:  Write a letter to the editor of the Caledonian Record (news@caledonianrecord.com), Coos County Democrat or Littleton Courier (tara@salmonpress.news) noting that this type of spill could easily happen in Whitefield, Dalton, Twin Mountain or other local towns. 

FOREST LAKE WATER QUALITY RANKS HIGH    

Comprehensive water quality testing in Forest Lake in late 2019 found the lake is essentially free of chemical or bacterial contamination. The tests covered dozens of different chemical contaminants like heavy metals and volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

Tests were conducted to establish a baseline for water quality in the lake and to counteract a disinformation campaign about the lake’s water quality.  In its effort to build a dump next to the lake, Casella has implied that the lake is already contaminated so more contamination from a dump won’t matter.  The tests were conducted by an independent lab with costs underwritten by the Forest Lake Association and NCABC.

In addition to the new chemical testing, NCABC analyzed 20 years of data on bacterial contamination collected by the state of NH.  The data show that Forest Lake has never had a problem with cyanobacteria and that E.coli readings are sufficiently low that the lake is now on the state’s short list of water bodies that don’t require annual testing. 

WHAT’S NEXT?    

We’ll send you regular updates about the fight against the Dalton dump – and what you can do to help make sure no dump threatens our quality of life.  We welcome your contribution to our efforts to safeguard Forest Lake and the North Country.

As we close out 2019, the Caledonian Record has recognized Dalton’s history-making vote for local emergency zoning as one of the region’s standout events of the year.

In July, the town of Dalton made history as citizens voted to enact emergency zoning, initiate the creation of a zoning board and begin drafting zoning governance for the town. After months of anti-zoning propaganda from Vermont-based Casella, common sense prevailed and the townspeople decided that the best course of action was for the town to take control over its own development, allowing the residents, not out-of-state business, to decide its fate. The prior lack of zoning in Dalton was cited as a major factor by Casella in Dalton being a prime target for its 180-acre landfill plans.

Erik Johnson, a Dalton property owner and board member at NCABC, said “big business has awakened to the resources available in the North Country and are looking for ways they can be exploited for their own benefit, without little or no consideration to the local population, business interests or environment. We saw this with Eversource’s Northern Pass, and now with Casella. I’m sure there will be more to come. However, northern New Hampshire residents are fiercely protective of our way of life and stewardship of the Great North Woods. Casella is already experiencing a strong backlash, evidenced by Bethlehem’s push to evict them from their town. Thanks to the Caledonian Record for recognizing this development.”

Thanks also to Save Forest Lake for their partnership, research, and activism in addressing this threat.

Here’s an update on the 180 acre dump that Casella Waste Systems has proposed next to Forest Lake and Forest Lake State Park in Dalton – along with a request for your support as we come to the end of this challenging year.  You’ll find a quick overview of progress and challenges below.

What’s at stake:  Nothing less than our quality of life in the North Country. Like the Dalton Drag Strip — which NCABC fought for 10 years — threats to our quality of life include wetlands pollution and water quality degradation as well as air pollution, noise pollution, foul odors, increases in truck traffic on our roads (garbage trucks making up to 90 round trips a day through Whitefield) plus threats to wildlife and property values.  The proposed dump a regional threat with impacts far beyond Dalton.

Where we are:   Casella hasn’t yet filed permit applications for the dump with the NH Department of Environmental Services.  But they may as early as the end of this year, starting the permit approval process – but alsogiving us much more detail about their plans than they’ve provided so far.

We’ll alert you as soon as the applications are filed.  We’ll monitor the DES approval procedures and rules, challenge questionable details in the application and in the permit decisions, and bring accountability to Casella’s deceptive public relations campaign. 

We’ll continue our work with other grassroots advocacy groups like Save Forest Lake, the Forest Lake Association and Bethlehem’s activist community.  NCABC volunteers, attorneys, environmental experts and traffic engineers will review and respond to the permit applications.  And we’ll keep you informed at every step.

What you can do:  The dump is a major assault on the entire North Country, with regional impacts that will likely last for generations.  Here’s what you can do to challenge it:

Talk to your neighbors, friends, town officials and state legislators   Local opposition to the Northern Pass helped defeat that project.  The same energy can help defeat the landfill.

Write letters, go to public hearings and let the media know what you think.  When the legislation described on the fact sheet below comes up for debate, we’ll ask your help in a letter writing campaign to our legislators. We’ll keep you posted on legislation and public hearings.

Stay up-to-date   Follow NCABCon our website, Facebook and Twitter. Or email us: northcountryabc@gmail.com

Please help us fight for a healthy environment and our exceptional quality of life.Your donation will fund community education and networking.  And it will help our engineering, transportation and legal consultants prepare to respond as soon as Casella files its permit applications. 

See our How to Help page for information on how you can help financially with a tax-deductible donation.

Warm thanks to you!  Your support makes this work possible.

The NCABC Team

Sarah Doucette, Adam Finkel, Ellen Hays, Erik Johnson, Claire Lupton, Mary Menzies, David Sundman and Elliot Wessler

Challenging the Dump:  What’s been Accomplished

Over the past year NCABC has worked with local citizens and grassroots groups like the Forest Lake Association and Save Forest Lake to protect the North Country from the 180 acre Casella Waste Systems dump that’s been proposed in Dalton near Forest Lake and Forest Lake State Park.  

Here’s what’s been accomplished:

Emergency Temporary Zoning in Dalton   In a special election in July, Dalton residents voted to adopt an Emergency Temporary Zoning Ordinance to regulate commercial and industrial development while Dalton writes a permanent Zoning Ordinance.  NCABC worked with the Forest Lake Association, Save Forest Lake and many, many local residents to help make this possible.

Permanent Zoning in Dalton   The Dalton Planning Board and town residents are working on a Permanent Zoning Ordinance that may be ready for a vote at Town Meeting in March.  The goal is to improve environmental protection and safeguard Dalton’s rural quality of life.  NCABC is poised to support the process when a draft document is released.

New State Legislation   NCABC,the Forest Lake Association and Save Forest Lake helped introduce two important bills to be considered in the NH House this legislative session.  The first prohibits new landfills near state parks, national parks and US Department of Agriculture forest land.  The second places a moratorium on new privately-owned for-profit landfills or the expansion of existing landfills until the state can study the creation of municipal waste districts to handle NH’s waste needs.  The bills are co-sponsored by House members of both parties.

Bethlehem Action   On Dec. 3, NCABC supported Bethlehem citizens in their long fight to close Casella’s Bethlehem facility at a NH DES Public Hearing on a proposed Stage VI expansion of the Bethlehem landfill. 

Site Monitoring   Friends of NCABC have used aerial photography and drone videos to monitor the Dalton Drag Strip site and have uncovered developments that may not be consistent with DES regulations. They’ll continue to monitor both the drag strip site and the potential landfill site.

Water Quality Testing   NCABC is fighting a Casella misinformation campaign about Forest Lake’s water quality.  Casella has implied that the lake is already polluted, so more pollution from a dump won’t matter.  In fact Forest Lake’s annual water testing program — a 20 year collaboration with the State of NH — indicates the lake’s water quality is excellent, and the lake is healthier than state averages for similar lakes.

Regional Outreach   NCABC recently sent a mailer to Whitefield residents detailing the negative effects of a Dalton dump on the town of Whitefield, including traffic congestion and up to 90 waste-hauling trucks making round trips every day on US 3 and Rt 116/142. Given the landfill’s many regional impacts, we’re collaborating with residents of Bethlehem, Twin Mountain, Sugar Hill and Littleton to oppose the dump. 

In a comprehensive report, a study committee under HB617, ch 265 reports on the state of solid waste management in New Hampshire. The report reviews the history of solid waste disposal in NH, current capacity and status of facilities, various possibilities for paths forward, and study methodology.

In summary:

“Based on testimony and research, the committee found that our state’s solid waste management planning and education efforts have fallen far behind that of our neighboring states and nationally, primarily due to deep budget cuts at the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services’ Solid Waste Management Bureau. The inability of resource-strapped DES to adequately perform its long-range planning and related responsibilities has left our state in a difficult predicament (some have termed it a developing waste emergency), born primarily by our municipalities and property taxpayers, as global recyclable markets roil, prices for recyclables fall, our solid waste disposal tonnage increases, our landfills fill and we continue to produce untold, arguably inexcusable, amounts of waste that is increasingly difficult and expensive to handle. Our state must adjust its laws and programs to reflect the new economic, environmental and public health realities of solid waste management. This will take commitment, foresight, collaboration and funding.

The study committee hopes the following findings and recommendations spotlight both the challenges and opportunities that lay ahead, enabling the state to do a better job in the future. Testimony submitted to the committee and related materials can be found at the committee’s NH General Court website here.”

On Dec. 3 2019, with other concerned citizens from Bethlehem and Dalton, Sarah Doucette of Whitefield gave testimony to NHDES, Waste Management Division on NCES/Casella’s proposed Stage VI expansion of the landfill in Bethlehem. 

Many comments pointed to Casella’s history of violations and compliance failures over nearly 30 years of operation on the site and particularly highlighted recent charges of filling the landfill more quickly than the permitted rate, failure to cover open faces of waste overnight, and toxins detected consistently in groundwater monitoring wells. Other speakers noted the long-recognized seep from the landfill into the Ammonoosuc River; odors were mentioned as a long standing aggravation to those living in Bethlehem; and the percent of out of state trash coming to the site — about 30% historically — was also a subject of concern as it pertains to NH’s limited landfill capacity.

The few speakers who favored continuing the landfill expansion and extending the facility’s use into 2023 cited tax breaks and free trash pick up as their reasons. Pubic comments from throughout the state are accepted until Dec. 20,  2019 at 4 pm: swpublic.comment@des.nh.gov or mail to NHDES at 29 Hazen Drive, Concord, NH 03302-0095.

Contacts: 

North Country Alliance for Balanced Change PO Box 533, Littleton, NH 03598
Dr. Adam Finkel — adfinkel@umich.edu— 202. 406. 0042 
Fred Anderson — fra676@mapc.com — 917. 584. 3242
Sarah Doucette — sdoucette58@gmail.com — 603. 960. 4268 

FIRST-EVER CHEMICAL ANALYSES OF FOREST LAKE WATER SHOW A PRISTINE LAKE 

PROPOSED LANDFILL MAY PUT CLEAN MOUNTAIN WATERS AT RISK 

Dalton, NH— Newly conducted water tests of Forest Lake for dozens of different chemical contaminants, as well as a longitudinal analysis of previous years of state testing for bacteria and phosphorus levels, have found that the lake is essentially free of any chemical or bacterial contamination. The results are an important development in the ongoing struggle between local residents and Casella Waste Systems, a national corporation proposing a new landfill in Dalton NH, very close to Forest Lake and bordering Forest Lake State Park. The water tests reveal that Forest Lake is pristine. Casella officials have said that the landfill won’t hurt water quality because Forest Lake is already compromised. But, the new study shows that is not the case. 

The water tests were conducted by Granite State Analytical Services, an independent analytical laboratory accredited by the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services. While many lakes in the Northeast do contain detectable, or even unhealthful, concentrations of heavy metals and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), Forest Lake revealed no detectable amounts of any of 13 metals, or of any of 69 different VOCs, with the exception (in one location in the lake) of trace amounts of two naturally occurring and essential metals. 

The testing was underwritten by the North Country Alliance for Balanced Change (NCABC) and the Forest Lake Association (FLA). NCABC President Sarah Doucette of Whitefield said that the results are important because they establish that the siting of a massive municipal-waste landfill proposed within 0.4 miles of the lakeshore might contaminate otherwise pure waters. “Casella Waste Systems, the would-be developer of this landfill, has told residents of Dalton that Forest Lake is already contaminated and ‘not as clean as you think’,” Doucette said. “We now know that if the dump is constructed, any metals or VOCs later found in the lake could implicate Casella’s landfill.” 

Dr. Adam M. Finkel, an NCABC board member, professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, and one of the pioneers of the quantitative risk assessment methods now used worldwide to protect water and air from undue amounts of carcinogenic and toxic substances, said “the health-based limits the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has set for the 13 metals range between 2 parts per billion (ppb) for mercury and 5000 ppb for zinc. But current analytical methods allow a lab to detect these metals in concentrations as low as 0.1 ppb for mercury and 1 ppb for the other 12 metals, so not detecting even these small amounts in Forest Lake’s water is extremely reassuring from a public health perspective,” he noted. “And, most of the 69 VOCs can be detected in concentrations as low as 0.5 ppb, while the EPA limits range from 2 to 1000 ppb, so again, non-detect results in all 69 cases shows how clean our rural mountain lake is, at least at the present time,” Dr. Finkel observed.* 

Fred Anderson, FLA President, also explained that Forest Lake has been incorrectly named in the media for water-quality issues. “A 2017 article in the Littleton Courier claimed that Forest Lake had been closed for a cyanobacteria outbreak, but that was the ‘other Forest Lake,’ the one 150 miles south of us in Winchester NH. We work hard to keep our lake safe and beautiful for swimming, fishing, boating, and even for some residents’ water supply, so we are gratified to have documented its purity through testing.” 

In addition to these first-ever tests for metals and VOCs, state government and the NH Volunteer Lake Assessment Program have tested Forest Lake regularly for phosphorus and E. coli bacteria for 22 years. Dr. Finkel has examined the test records, and points out that the phosphorus level has remained very stable at about 6 ppb over this time period, whereas the median phosphorus content of NH lakes is about 12 ppb, while the EPA regards amounts under 40 ppb as acceptable to prevent algal blooms. Finkel said that while there have been very occasional measurements of E. coli (up to 102 organisms per 100 milliliters (mL) of water; EPA says that levels up to 406 per mL are acceptable for surface waters), there is apparently a misperception that these readings reflect conditions in Forest Lake proper. “No level of E. coli above 10 counts per 100 mL has ever been found in the Lake itself,” Finkel said; “rather, the higher levels have only been found in the brook adjacent to the State Park beach, where there is sometimes wild animal activity.” 

According to Doucette, “NCABC’s vigilance now extends to Forest Lake. Beginning in 2008, we focused on environmental protection in the Alder Brook area of the Ammonoosuc River watershed. It is surprising and disturbing to find the proposed landfill with its myriad environmental threats sited between those two treasured North Country water bodies.” Anderson of FLA acknowledged the need for NH to manage waste responsibly while protecting water resources, noting that “FLA and NCABC, along with Jon Swan’s Save Forest Lake organization, are working with state representatives to develop and adopt legislation that pursues these essential goals.” 

* The water sample taken from the deepest part of Forest Lake showed no detectable levels of any of the 82 substances. A second sample, taken where the cove begins near the NW portion of the lake, did have extremely low but detectable levels of two naturally occurring and essential trace metals: copper (at 1/1,000th of the EPA limit) and zinc (1/3,000th of the limit). That sample also had one odd positive VOC reading: 1.3 ppb of the solvent methylene chloride. However, the “blank” water sample the lab tested at the same time showed 1.8 ppb of methylene chloride, making it quite likely that this was a lab error. NCABC will repeat the methylene chloride test in the spring of 2020.

The Select Board will soon be appointing 5 members to a Zoning Board of Adjustment (ZBA) to carry out the duties of the Emergency Temporary Zoning Ordinances. The application deadline for this new ZBA is August 21 at noon. Letters of interest, background and experience are required, and this is open only to Dalton residents. Full details are available on the town website.

The Select Board needs an Administrative Assistant and the Planning Board needs a Secretary. Both positions require taking meeting minutes. Keeping accurate and detailed minutes of town board meetings is critical, as our neighbors in Bethlehem found in their court battles against Casella. This is a way to help the Town with a small investment of time and residency is not required for these part-time positions.

For more information, see the pages on the town website for the Select Board and Planning Board.

NCABC Friends and Supporters,

Tonight the Town of Dalton adopted the provisions of RSA 674:24-29, Emergency Temporary Zoning. This means that Dalton has zoning through at least the March 2021 Town Meeting! This is an important victory for the Town and for the North Country.

To preserve this victory at the local level it is now time to work toward a permanent zoning ordinance so that Dalton can continue to have control of its future development. NCABC will help with this in any way we can. Thank you for your support!