Linda Massimilla, Edith Tucker, Timothy Egan and Dennis Thompson are NH state representatives.
Our management of solid waste landfills in New Hampshire is a hot mess.
Consider this:
The Coakley landfill in Portsmouth has contaminated nearby water supplies.
We still don’t know the extent of possible contamination from the recent leachate spill at the NCES landfill in Bethlehem.
New Hampshire’s solid waste regulator (Department of Environmental Services, DES) has not updated its solid waste plan in nearly twenty years, despite a legal requirement for it to do so every six years.
We allow our landfills to be filled up with vast amounts of out-of-state trash, primarily from Massachusetts, and the latest proposal for a new landfill would reserve up to half of its capacity for out-of-state trash.
And sensible legislation to solve some of these problems has so far been stymied by the solid waste industry, although there is reason to be hopeful as some very helpful bills are now winding their way through the New Hampshire Legislature.
One of these bills is HB 1454, which passed in the New Hampshire House on a bipartisan voice vote, and will soon be up for a vote in the New Hampshire Senate. HB 1454 would help ensure that any new landfill sited in New Hampshire will not contaminate nearby lakes, rivers or the seacoast.
Right now, New Hampshire’s rules only require that a new landfill be setback 200 feet from a permanent water body. This one-size-fits-all approach makes no sense because a landfill that close to a water body imposes significant risks of contamination.
HB 1454 is a sensible bill based on well-accepted hydrogeology principles. It would change New Hampshire’s rules so that any new landfill would have to be setback far enough from a water body so that there is sufficient time to stop any contamination.
Unfortunately there is strong opposition to the bill, primarily from Casella Waste Systems, a Vermont-based company that is trying to permit a new landfill in Dalton. This new landfill would be located in a sensitive wetlands area, right next to Forest Lake State Park, and very near the lake and the Ammonoosuc River.
Significantly, Casella has expressed virtually no concerns about the science behind HB 1454. But the company is on record that enactment of HB 1454 would prevent it from following-through with its Dalton proposal. As such, their opposition seems to come entirely from concerns that the bill will hurt their bottom line.
Casella’s arguments against HB 1454 involve three tangled issues. First, that New Hampshire faces a landfill capacity crisis due to the expected closure of Casella’s NCES landfill in Bethlehem. Second, that the only way to solve this capacity crisis is for New Hampshire’s DES to permit Casella’s proposed Dalton landfill. Third, that HB 1454 will prevent Casella from getting permits to build a new landfill in Dalton, thereby exacerbating the capacity crisis.
These are hollow arguments, largely rebutted by DES experts, and sometimes even by Casella employees. Despite Casella’s claims, there is no landfill capacity crisis in New Hampshire. When the NCES landfill in Bethlehem closes there are two other commercial landfills in New Hampshire that currently have the capability to absorb the solid waste that will be diverted from closure of the NCES landfill.
One of these commercial landfills is Turnkey, which as currently permitted has capacity through 2034. The other, Mt. Carberry, is already in the final stages of permit approval for a major expansion that will ensure capacity available well in the future.
In addition to these hollow arguments, the most insidious argument made by opponents of HB 1454 is that New Hampshire residents will have to pay more for waste disposal if HB 1454 is enacted. If this were true it would be an important consideration for the New Hampshire Senate in its deliberations over HB 1454.
The good news is that it is not true, and a Casella spokesman is on record saying that. In recent testimony before a New Hampshire House Committee, John Gay, who heads operations at Casella’s NCES landfill, was asked by a House member whether with the closing of the NCES landfill, would tipping fees at other landfills go higher?
His response was that it is hard to say, but based on economics and whatever changes in the market occur, that tipping fees “…probably wouldn’t go up.”
To be generous, this argument is based on a tiny kernel of truth: the maxim in economics that if supply is reduced, all other things equal, prices will go up. The problem with this superficial argument is that it’s almost never the case that all other things remain equal.
And because New Hampshire already has sufficient existing capacity and has capacity expansions that are well-along in the permitting process, there is no reason to think that the supply of landfill capacity for the solid waste generated in New Hampshire will be less than adequate. Therefore, it is unlikely to affect tipping fees.
In fact, in the only direct evidence available of what is likely to happen when an NCES customer switches to another provider, total costs went down. This happened when the town of Dalton recently transitioned from sending its solid waste from NCES landfill in Bethlehem to the Mt. Carberry landfill. There is no reason to think that other NCES customers which will have to make their own transitions won’t have the same experience.
HB 1454 is a straightforward way to help prevent landfill development from contaminating New Hampshire’s water resources. It won’t cost the state government a penny, and it won’t cost New Hampshire residents a penny.