We appreciate your service to our state.
We know this has been a difficult legislative session and it is far from over.
Along with many others, we ask you now to give careful consideration to a piece of legislation before you that is important to us: HB177.
NCABC is one of several grassroots organizations that support HB177 and together with those other organizations we represent thousands of voters throughout the state.
We ask the NH Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee members to vote Ought To Pass, and for the full Senate to support the bill.
HB177 is a needed and timely legislative fix for a regulatory problem.
Under its current rules, NHDES may issue permits for a landfill as long as it is more than 100 feet from a NH state park.
We think a buffer that small makes no sense, and we think a buffer of 2 miles, as proposed in HB177, is a compromise and good public policy.
In the short-run, HB177 is needed to protect Forest Lake State Park from landfill encroachment.
In the long-run, it will protect all of our state parks.
One day it may protect a state park in your district, or maybe a state park that your constituents care deeply about.
HB177 has been carefully crafted.
The measure was recently amended to address concerns expressed in hours of hearings in the NH House, where it passed in bi-partisan fashion April 9.
HB177 is a good bill.
It’s simple.
Is solves a problem that requires a legislative fix; it does not trample
on property rights; and it will not cost NH taxpayers a cent.
Opponents of HB177 have raised a number of questions about the bill.
We find many of their concerns unsupported and misleading.
To help foster careful consideration of the bill, we have prepared a Fact Sheet addressing some of their claims:
*Does HB177 Trample Property Rights?
*Is HB177 Spot Zoning?
*Does HB177 Usurp Local Control?
*Is HB177 Unconstitutional?
*Will HB177 Exacerbate a Capacity Shortage?
*Will HB177 Increase Consumer Costs?
*Will HB177 Increase Carbon Emissions?
*Is HB177 Needed Given NHDES’s Authority?
*Is the 2 Mile Buffer Arbitrary?
In the Fact Sheet presented below we emphatically answer to all of the above questions: NO.
We are happy to address anything in the Fact Sheet, or any other lingering issues you may have—please feel free to call or email. We are also happy to make available to Senators the legal and technical experts who have been advising us on NHDES permitting matters.
Sincerely,
NCABC President Eliot Wessler on behalf of the NCABC Board of Directors