Citing unspecified issues, panel stalls bipartisan trash juice bill

Yahoo

05-05-2025

A photo taken by the Department of Environmental Services during a June 4 site visit shows the Bethlehem landfill. (Screenshot from DES report)
Legislation spurred by failures to properly manage 'trash juice' at several of the state's landfills hangs in uncertainty after a Senate committee vote last week.
The state already requires landfill applicants to create plans for managing leachate, the liquid pollution created when precipitation mixes with waste. House Bill 566, which is backed by bipartisan sponsors and moved easily through the House, would require more details from new landfills and those seeking to expand about the treatment of that liquid pollution and transportation for facilities that treat it off site.
But the legislation hit a hurdle April 29 in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, where members voted, 3-2, to recommend the bill be rereferred to committee, leaving its fate for the session unclear. Backers of the bill expressed surprise at the vote — and wished that concerns about it had been aired more publicly. They pointed to leachate management issues around the state, including some in April around the time the bill was first heard in the Senate.
Before the vote, Sen. Howard Pearl, a Loudon Republican, said he was 'just not quite convinced yet that this is right.' He said he wanted 'the opportunity just to look at this and see if we can resolve' what he saw as issues in the bill 'before we moved it forward.' He did not specify what those issues were.
'I'm not necessarily opposed to the concept of it,' Pearl said. 'Just the workability of it — I've had some conversations since our hearing that seem to be very problematic, and I would not want to put something in place that … was going to create problems, unintended consequences.'
Pearl did not respond to a request for comment from the Bulletin asking who those conversations were with and what parts of the bill he found problematic.
Rep. Nicholas Germana, the Keene Democrat leading the bill, said he had gone to 'great lengths to reach out to the industry and to (the Department of Environmental Services) to make sure that this was workable.'
'It was surprising,' Germana said of the vote, 'and I wish there was more of an opportunity to try to address those concerns, but it's hard to address them when they're not raised in a public setting.'
Germana said he hopes he can clear up concerns with senators on the committee to 'see if there's any chance that we might be able to change the outcome in the Senate.' If not, 'this fall, when they take up retained bills again, hopefully there's an opportunity for a discussion about … what the issues are.'
Sen. David Watters, a Dover Democrat, said before the vote that besides a technical change Germana had planned to suggest, 'I'm not clear … what the issues are.'
'This is one where we know … there's been spills, there's been problems, there's been overflows,' Watters said. 'And so while I think it's always good to keep working on things, I think at this point I'd like to vote against rerefer, because I think it might be possible for us to get a bill done.'
The other Democrat on the committee, Sen. Cindy Rosenwald of Nashua, joined him in opposing the motion. She said leachate management problems seemed to be getting worse because of 'more intense rainfall.'
Adam Finkel, a Dalton resident and former federal regulator who has advocated in the Legislature for more protective landfill standards, said he's starting to see 'that fewer and fewer opponents of legislation, at least in the environmental area, are bothering to come to hearings and give their opinions on the record, because they don't have to.'
'It's a win-win for them,' he said, 'if they can not have to make their arguments in public, where they're weak and can be refuted, and they get to make them in private, in a setting where they're more important than anything the public says.'
Harmful chemicals from trash seep into leachate, meaning its mismanagement can pose serious environmental and public health risks. This risk was brought into the spotlight by the recent management problems, including hundreds of leachate-related violations at Casella Waste Systems' landfill in the northern town of Bethlehem. (The company is now locked in a legal battle with the state over its bid to build another landfill in the nearby town of Dalton.)
Germana said 'the day after I introduced that bill to the Senate, they had a problem at Bethlehem' with leachate.
In April, Casella was doing maintenance on its leachate collection system at the Bethlehem landfill, said Jeff Weld, the company's vice president of communications.
Michael Wimsatt, DES' waste management division director, said the department had been notified of this maintenance, which was likely to increase the level of leachate on the liner, since the pump could not be operated during the process.
On the morning of April 23, operators at Casella's Bethlehem landfill noticed a leachate pump in one of the pump stations was not working, according to a memo from DES waste management specialist Austin Mills. Weld said the company 'immediately investigated and began monitoring the (affected) pump house and manually pumping, pending repair the following day.'
The morning of April 24, an electrician made repairs, 'restoring normal operation to the pumping system by 10:30AM,' per the memo.
A company official, Lindsey Menard, told Mills that the transducer level 'read 100+ inches when the operation was restored,' according to the memo. At the time of the phone call with the department that afternoon, Menard said the level was at 14 inches.
Leachate levels are not supposed to exceed 12 inches on the liner of a landfill. But Wimsatt said the 100-plus-inch reading on the transducer wasn't equivalent to the level of leachate on the liner. If the transducer reading was accurate, the amount on the liner was probably '3 feet less than the 100 inches,' he said. The department was still reviewing the incident, and it was not yet clear what the highest leachate level on the liner had been, he said.
In the department memo, Mills said he reminded the Casella representative that the state 'requires the permittee to notify the department as soon as practicable and that we were over 24 hours since they were first aware of an issue.' Menard said 'she would remind the operations staff' at the landfill, the memo said.
There had also been exceedances days before this incident, resulting in leachate levels reaching just over 63 inches and 46 inches on the liner system in two pump stations, according to an incident report. Weld said the exceedances were 'reported in a timely fashion verbally and in writing,' and said pumps had to be shut off while cleaning was being done.
HB 566 would not affect the Bethlehem landfill, but its handling of leachate has been cited frequently as proponents of the bill have made their case for it. Asked for the company's stance on the bill, Weld said there was already 'significant oversight' for leachate management in the state, and that the 'ability to predict the future of leachate technology, availability of disposal sites, transportation options, etc. at the time of permit application for the lifespan of a landfill is not realistic.'
The bill would put the existing requirement for leachate management plans into statute, in addition to setting more detailed standards. It would include language that requires DES, before issuing a permit, to make a positive determination that the permit application includes a detailed leachate management plan.
The state currently requires landfills to: have at least two locations for leachate disposal; estimate how much leachate they will generate; and describe how leachate will be handled at the landfill before being shipped somewhere else for disposal, according to DES. They must also have procedures in place to bring down leachate levels to a foot or lower within a week of a 100-year storm event. Regulations also include details about on-site leachate management systems.
Eliot Wessler, a Whitefield resident involved in solid waste advocacy, said this bill does 'a lot more, in my opinion, than what's in the existing DES rules.'
'It makes very, very clear that a solid waste permit applicant has to provide detailed information about their leachate plans,' Wessler said in an interview, 'and not only in the short run, but in the long run, including what happens, you know, at the point of closure and even in the post-closure period.'
He had been surprised by the vote, he said, telling senators in testimony before the bill hearing that he 'fully expected' them to recommend it for passage.
'How can you be opposed to trying to require … new landfills and expansions of landfills to be more concerned about how they manage leachate,' Wessler said, 'and to give DES more opportunities to correct any problems with their leachate management plan before the permits are issued?'