Local control is under attack
The Concord Monitor got it exactly right: Senator Avard’s bill (SB 593) will “strip towns of control over landfill expansions.” It’s special corporate interest legislation at its worst — a desperate rescue of Casella to let it bypass local planning, zoning and even legal agreements that would otherwise prevent Casella from ramming down the throats of Bethlehem residents yet another expansion at its NCES landfill.
Senator Avard and a few Senate colleagues have convinced themselves, with massive help from Casella’s lobbyists, that taking this drastic legislative action is the only way New Hampshire can avert a landfill capacity crisis. That view is utter nonsense. Senator Avard has been told repeatedly by NHDES that NH has sufficient landfill capacity for at least a decade under the most conservative assumptions, and that two of the state’s major landfills (Mt. Carberry and Turnkey), both of which are operated much more safely than Casella’s NCES landfill, have indicated they will expand capacity as needed. And here’s the clincher — in contrast to NCES, these two other landfills have generated virtually no local opposition because they are for the most-part well-run.
Moreover, SB 593 has to be stopped because it may be the “slippery slope” that some in our state may use to strip towns of even more local control — not only over landfills, but over equally controversial projects like chemical plants, enormous data centers or even compact nuclear plants.
Tell your Senator to kill SB 593– tell them you’re against corporate giveaways and power grabs by state bureaucrats.