FOR THE NH HOUSE E&A COMMITTEE HEARING
ON HB 177 (2021)– February 3, 2021
Dear Chairman Pearl and other members of the Committee:
Thank you for providing this forum for the public to express their views on HB 177.
I am the President of North Country Alliance for Balanced Change. This written testimony is on behalf of the NCABC Board of Directors, but please note that it is also on behalf of the hundreds of NCABC supporters who live, work, play–and vote– in New Hampshire’s North Country and throughout the state of NH.
NCABC is one of several North Country grassroots organizations as well as a number of regional and national public interest organizations that will be testifying today in support of HB 177. I believe that all of these organizations speak with one voice in urging the members of this Committee to vote YES.
We know that many NH legislators are familiar with the goals of HB 177 and support it unconditionally. However, if you have any concerns about HB 177, please let us know and allow us to make our case. If you still have lingering concerns about HB 177, we ask you to vote yes in Committee so that it can get full consideration in the House of Representatives.
We think that protecting NH state parks from encroachment from landfill development is an easy call because it is so obviously good public policy.
Unfortunately, it is clear that regulatory oversight by NH’s Department of Environmental Services is not sufficient, given the mandate DES has and the limited resources and tools at their disposal. Protection of NH’s state parks from landfill development requires a legislative fix.
NH’s state parks are largely on land that has been set aside for its natural beauty, its pristine environment, and its recreational opportunities. Solid waste landfills, despite being highly regulated, are clearly one of the most environmentally harmful and risky land use activities. In a nutshell, landfills and state parks are not compatible abutting land uses.
Our immediate concern is the damage a landfill adjacent to FLSP could do to the environmental amenities in and around FLSP, the recreational opportunities it provides for area residents, and the economic fallout of tourism losses that are fully expectable if a landfill is built within a few hundred feet.
But our bigger concern is that if the state doesn’t have the tools to limit a landfill developer from making private choices with such terrible and foreseeable impacts on a public asset like FLSP, the same thing could happen to any one of the 60+ state parks in NH.
We therefore ask members of this Committee to consider how you would respond if a state park in your district were threatened by landfill development. And when you do, we hope and expect that you will decide to vote YES on HB 177.