Posted with permission.
New Plan Seeks To Lengthen Land-Filling Duration To 2026
Robert Blechl
The Caledonian-Record, April 20, 2020
After Casella Waste Systems in February pulled its application for landfill expansion in Bethlehem, one day before the state concluded it did not meet the public benefit requirement, the company has submitted a revised application that will once again go before residents at a public hearing.
On March 24, North Country Environmental Services, the New Hampshire subsidiary of Casella, submitted its amended application, which also proposes a longer duration of land-filling, lengthening it by several years and taking it to 2026.
The application for Stage 6 expansion is now under review by the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services to determine whether it is complete.
The department under New Hampshire’s solid waste management rules has 60 days from the March 24 submission to determine if it is complete, representatives with DES’s Solid Waste Management Bureau said last week.
Following a determination of completeness, DES will undertake a technical review of the application and schedule a public hearing to gather input from residents that will be included as part of the department’s decision-making process.
A decision on the application is due four months from its receipt, which might or might not be measured from the March 24 date of submission depending on the completeness of the initial application, or 30 days following a public hearing, whichever occurs latest, said DES representatives.
The time line for DES review can be extended with the consent of the applicant.
Because of the variables, DES representatives said they cannot provide a firm date by which a decision will be made.
The Stage 6 expansion seeks to add 5.7 acres to the current 47-acre landfill footprint that would extend to the east and south of the existing landfill.
If an approval comes in the next few months, NCES in its application states construction would begin later in 2020 and land-filling operations in the new cell would begin in early January and extend through 2026.
The previous Stage 6 application submitted in 2019 had lifespan of 2.3 years before capacity would be reached, then in about 2023.
In its revised application, NCES seeks the same waiver of New Hampshire’s solid waste management rules for a leak detection system and location system design standards, similar to the waivers approved in the Stage 4 permitting in 2013 and Stage 5 in 2014, Bob Grillo, project manager with the Casella-enlisted CMA Engineers, said in a letter informing the town of the new application.
Stage 6 would accept municipal solid waste, construction and demolition debris and special waste, with municipal solid waste making up 60 to 70 percent of the waste received at the Trudeau Road landfill, he said.
In February, DES determined that the initial Stage 6 application did not meet the state’s substantial public benefit requirement because its then proposed 400-ton annual waste disposal rate for 2.3 years would occur during a time when New Hampshire is projected to have excess disposal capacity and no regional or statewide capacity need.
In that application, DES concluded NCES was presenting “alternative calculations” on the amount of solid waste to be generated within the state during a 20-year planning period, a statewide shortfall in existing permitted disposal capacity is not projected by DES to occur until after 2025, and land-filling is the least preferred method of solid waste management under the state’s solid waste management statute.
In the revised application, Casella engineer John Gay said the public benefit demonstration has been updated to include 2018 annual facility reports.
According to the new application, the annual rate of fill will drop significantly from the previously proposed 400,000 tons a year to an average annual rate of 175,000 tons to reach the 2026 lifespan, in total taking in about 900,000 tons of waste.
In the application, the company states it “firmly disagreed” with DEC’s conclusion in February that the public benefit requirement was not met in the previous application, but “recognized that DES would not approve the 2019 application as submitted.”
The Stage 6 expansion includes the boundary of a new property Casella purchased in 2015.According to the revised application, company representatives said they anticipate DES approval of Stage 6 in September and phase one construction to be complete and capacity available in January 2021 and phase two of Stage 6, the eastern phase, to undergo construction in 2022 or 2023.