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.