CONCORD — The New Hampshire Legislature’s failure to override Governor Chris Sununu’s veto of a bill designed to set scientific criteria for the siting of solid waste landfills does not mean that the issue is dead. An Amherst representative has refiled the bill for the next legislative session.
The representative, Democrat Megan Murray, said, “What this piece of legislation is asking for is to simply require a groundwater study so that the science follows first, and then the siting comes after.”
The original bill, HB 1454, sponsored by Representative Edith Tucker (D-Bartlett), passed both the House and Senate before Sununu vetoed it. It would replace the current 200-foot setback requirement for new landfills with a setback based on hydrogeological studies of the soil and bedrock below. The landfill would have to be sited where polluted water would not reach a major water body for five years, giving the operator and the state time to remediate the problem before it contaminates rivers and lakes.
In his veto statement, Sununu said the bill was unnecessary and that it would likely “curtail landfill development in the state and lead to New Hampshire’s waste to be transported out of state, creating higher costs and property taxes for our citizens.”
“New Hampshire’s landfill regulations are already rigorous and robust,” Sununu said. “According to the DES, there is no data indicating that the lined landfills currently operating and adhering to our regulations in the state are adversely affecting our state’s waterways.”
Senator James Gray (R-Concord) said current regulations allow a landfill operator to pump off leachate and figure out what the problem is. There are chemicals that can line a leaking pipe while it is still under the ground.
“So all these people that say liners leak, well, can you repair the liner?” Gray asked. “Can you keep pumping the leachate off such that the leachate level never gets to an area where there is a hole in the liner, and can that hole be fixed?”
Adam Finkel of Dalton, a professor of Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Michigan School of Public Health who formerly helped to run a federal regulatory agency and assisted in drafting HB 1454, said, “We wouldn’t be here talking about 200 feet if they had to monitor the groundwater every five seconds.”
The state requires monitoring only once every six months. Referring to the proposed landfill near Forest Lake State Park that prompted the legislation, Finkel said, “I don’t what you would do if you were 200 feet away from a lake [with groundwater flowing] at 16 feet per day. I don’t know that there’s enough energy in the state to run a turbine that would pull that plume away from the water body fast enough.”
The whole point of the bill, he said, is to provide five years “so that there’s a sliver of a chance to find, fix, and repair” a leak.
He noted that original bill, based on a similar law in Maine, had been modified at the industry’s request to include other provisions from Maine that allowed a shorter setback if the operator installed certain mitigation measures.
“It was made known to us that industry wanted that, and we gave them exactly what Maine has,” Finkel said.
Asked if there are other modifications that could be incorporated into the new bill to satisfy those who voted against it, Finkel noted that the Granite State’s setback requirements are already the weakest in the Northeast.
“Could the legislature weaken the bill? I don’t know how,” he said. “The five years could be five minutes away from a lake, but I don’t see it getting weaker. Could it be stronger? Is sure could. … Could they be monitoring the groundwater more often? Should they be required to monitor PFAS which they aren’t right now? Yeah, but people would complain and say, ‘Don’t these people get it? It was vetoed in its present form. Why are they making it stronger?”
Murray said, “We feel that our position was a very strong bipartisan position in the House, so while there may be small, minor edits and things like that, I am not entirely sure where that process would go.”
Representative Richard Littlefield (R-Laconia) was among those supporting HB 1454. “[P]rotecting 64 state parks from future landfill contamination … saves our land, our lakes, and massive amounts of tax dollars long term,” he said wrote in an op-ed piece for the Laconia Daily Sun.
The House supported the veto override, 256-65, but it had a single majority vote in the Senate (12-11), where a two-thirds vote was necessary.
Murray pointed out that the bill also saves money for developers by having them do the research on site suitability at the start of a project, before they have sunk a lot of money into it.
“It gives folks the opportunity to do the background work ahead of time, before things would get too far down the road,” she said.
Finkel offered an illustration of what a landfill leak could mean.
“People think about, you know, a dripping faucet,” he said. Instead, leachate from a landfill the size of the one proposed for Dalton would fill the 200-acre Forest Lake between two and seven times, Finkel estimated.
“What about Winnipesaukee?” he asked. “If all of that stuff came out all at once, you’d add four inches to the entire lake from one landfill.”
Murray said, “You only get one shot with your water sources and, as with other situations, once those water sources are compromised, it’s very hard to undo what’s been there.”
Her involvement with solid waste issues began when, as a parent, she became aware of how many toys and materials could not be donated or accepted for recycling.
“A large portion of those kid-related items end up in landfills,” she said.
She was named as clerk of the Solid Waste Study Committee in 2018-2019 and was part of a bipartisan group of legislators who started examining the scope of the problem of regulating waste. The committee’s report to the legislature, which was published on the General Court website, contained several recommendations, including the formation of the Solid Waste Working Group that is now assisting the Department of Environmental Services in updating its policies and completing a new Solid Waste Plan, to be released on October 1.
“In my opinion, no matter what side of the aisle you’re on, what we do with our waste is something we all end up having to deal with,” Murray said.
This story originally appeared in the Laconia Daily Sun.