CONCORD — A last-minute attempt to further reduce the length of a proposed moratorium on the issuance of new landfill permits failed during the House Environment and Agriculture Committee’s executive session on February 20, with only Barbara Comtois (R-Center Barnstead) and Jacob Brouillard (R-Nottingham) voting against setting an end date of 2028. They wanted to end the moratorium in 2027.
House Bill 1620 as introduced would have delayed new permits until 2031, three years before the Department of Environmental Services predicts any landfill capacity problems and even longer before an actual shortfall is likely. As Wayne Morrison of the North Country Alliance for Balanced Change testified during a committee hearing, the DES’ date of 2034 assumes that the landfill operated by Waste Management is going to shut down at that time. In fact, the landfill can expand to additional acreage that would extend its life for decades.
In sponsoring the bill, Representative David Rochefort of Grafton District 1 accepted the hypothetical capacity shortfall in 2034 and crafted the bill to allow the DES to issue a new landfill permit in 2031. In a further compromise, the bill allows the DES to continue reviewing landfill permits during the moratorium while it is updating its solid waste rules. The proposed moratorium also gives the state time to determine how well other solid waste legislation that is under consideration is working.
Shortly after Rochefort filed the legislation, Casella Waste Systems, which had withdrawn its earlier application to build a landfill near Forest Lake State Park in Dalton, submitted a new landfill application. The Department of Justice is considering whether the proposed moratorium would apply to Casella’s current application, which is under review.
In testimony before the committee on February 13, Kirsten Koch, vice-president of Public Policy for the Business and Industry Association of New Hampshire, of which Casella is a member, opposed the bill, saying it is unnecessary, that the date 2031 is arbitrary, and that it takes six to 10 years to obtain a landfill permit. She said it “basically allows for applications to be held while the goalpost is moved, whether it’s the rules or legislation.”
In their deliberations on February 14, committee members agreed that a moratorium is a good idea, but they questioned the seven-year delay and settled on four years. Yet during its executive session on the 20th, Chair Judy Aron (R-South Ackworth) said she had reconsidered and thought halting new permits only until 2027 would be sufficient.
“I feel more comfortable with the 2027 date simply because, you know, we’re making some policy changes and DES is working through the rule updates, and I think … giving it until 2027 for all the dust to settle is more, I feel more comfortable with that date as opposed to waiting yet one more year for this pause.”
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