1 week Ago
I LOVE New Hampshire. I have 70 years’ worth of love for the state. It is my deep sense of place.
I love the people, the land, the clean air and water and the wildlife that shares all this with us. New Hampshire is everyone’s backyard and we are all just upstream or downwind from one another. What makes the Granite State different, unique and precious is worth fighting for, and any area’s diminishment lessens our state as a whole.
So, when I recently read about what’s happening in Claremont, my deep sense of place suddenly included them. The city is at a critical crossroad in being able to protect its people and environment and needs help. Acuity Management, based in Massachusetts, has applied for a “modification” to their 1987 permit that presently allows them to operate a limited-use, one-acre recycling center, in order that they might import 500 tons of construction and demolition debris a day.
A day. Theoretically, employees would recycle what they could from crushed building materials and then load what is left — a good part of it — onto railway cars to be shipped out of state. This material would have the strong potential to include PFAS, heavy metals and toxins, just by the very nature of its composition, some of which may be unknown.
No doubt out-of-state debris would be included. Many concerned and informed citizens of Claremont believe that this modified recycling center permit would actually create a transfer station for construction debris on a postage stamp-sized site, which happens to be less than a mile away from an elementary school, 400 homes, Meadow Brook, which feeds into the Connecticut River, an aquifer and wetlands. Recently, about 400 of those concerned citizens crowded into the Claremont Opera House and 48 of them spoke to the undoubtedly devastating effects this project would have on public health and the environment.
Their concerns included the impact of dozens of daily trucks delivering construction material over already fragile town roads, the cost to taxpayers for repairing those roads, the impact on air quality from diesel fumes, potential water contamination caused by rain runoff through the debris, noise pollution, odor, and traffic and congestion. Property values would certainly not benefit. The New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services (DES) is now tasked with deciding if this project meets its regulations and guidelines, including the aspect of “public benefit” for the state.
If DES performs its due diligence and implements any needed discretion the New Hampshire Supreme Court has granted them on such projects, it will prevent this poorly sited, poorly planned endeavor from proceeding. This is an inappropriate location for a project of this magnitude with its deeply problematic components. Though this business may belong somewhere, it does not belong down the street from Maple Avenue Elementary School, water bodies, and hundreds of homes.
Bad plan, wrong place. The citizens of Claremont have said no, the city council, zoning board and planning board have all said no. The Conservation Committee has said no, and several local state lawmakers have said no.
DES has the regulations, discretion, power and responsibility to say no, too. Proactively speaking, I hope to eventually thank DES for doing its job of protecting us from this bad idea..
