The April 26 issue of the Monitor included a front-page article “Safe to Burn?” by David Brooks, the Monitor’s scientific guru. His visit to the Penacook trash incinerator appears to have been pleasant and informative. Several years ago, I took the sixth-grade class from Chichester Central School on a field trip to the same incinerator and they were properly impressed; it was followed by a trip to (then) PSNH in Bow – we were studying electricity production.
Unfortunately, Brooks skipped over discussing the incinerator’s toxic ash byproduct, which until recently was stored in an above-ground location off Punch Brook Road in Franklin and now appears as a 200-foot-high trash mountain, which will supply toxic leachate in perpetuity (as long as the rain falls) via pipeline across the Merrimack River to the DES-owned and operated Winnipesaukee River Basin Wastewater Treatment Plant. There it is turned into sewage sludge, which is supplied gratis to farmers (and others) for application to hayfields and cornfields, inter alia.
The long-term safety and health implications of such use are still under debate and would be a good subject for Brooks’s continued review and comment.
Paul L. Adams
Chichester