Sarah Doucette

Greetings Chairwoman Aron and Members of the Energy and Agriculture Committee, I write in strong support of HB 215. I hope you will welcome these measures too, given your committee’s experience in recent sessions overseeing waste management legislation and learning the concerns it raises. I believe this legislation is long overdue. Several notes here— 1) Over several years, private citizens and grassroots groups in the state have borne much responsibility for creating a meaningful cost-benefit discussion with state regulators and legislators about landfill permits. The focus has been on predictable regional and statewide environmental, public health and community impacts of landfill operations—exactly the topics the bill proposes for assessment by an independent party as part of an application. This legislation would establish a preliminary, mandated evaluation process, rather than the voluntary public oversight we have relied on recently to assess the relative cost and value of landfill applications in our communities. It is sensible the proposed assessment would apply to any facility, whether it be private or operated by a state, county or municipality. Regardless of who operates a landfill, it is imperative that the benefits be measured alongside the harms for clarity about net public benefit. HB 215 would help us avoid landfill siting mistakes that could lead to the type heartrending community damage and remediation challenges we see today at the Saint-Gobain plant in Merrimack. DES seems hesitant in the FN Methodology note to include the HB 215 preliminary assessment in its application process, but such cost-benefit considerations are a longstanding and fundamental practice among regulatory agencies. I know you have received credible testimony to that effect and I hope you will not be dissuaded by the questionable suggestion of undue and ongoing burdens on DES. The assessment will be provided to the agency at a modest expense borne by the developer, not the public, and surely a rubric can be developed to score the results. 2) The bill’s clarity about capacity need would give all parties an understanding of when it is critical to permit a new landfill facility and when the facility can sensibly commence operations. These questions have bedeviled the permitting discussion underway in recent years. HB 215 will conserve and preserve our limited landfill space until it is needed—something that I believe is not possible under the current rules. 3) It seems obvious that a landfill application must be judged on its own merits for net public benefit and not be considered in tandem and bolstered by another application for a separate project. However, given Casella Waste Management’s recent Solid Waste Standard Permit application linking it’s Dalton landfill application to a possible future application for a downstate Materials Recovery Facility, it is important to have the policy clearly stated in HB 215. “The net public benefit of a proposed operation or project shall be limited solely to an evaluation of that project and may not be mitigated or enhanced in relation to any other unrelated project.” Thank you for your earnest work on behalf of the public good and I look forward to progress in this session of the legislature on the pressing issues of solid waste management reform that will come before you. Sincerely, Sarah Doucette Whitefield, NH