Latest news with #Germana
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Citing unspecified issues, panel stalls bipartisan trash juice bill
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?'
Yahoo
14-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Bill banning cat declawing rejected in New Hampshire House
Lawmakers rejected the cat declawing bill on a 191-177 vote. (Photo by Dana Wormald/New Hampshire Bulletin) The House on Thursday shot down a bill that would have prohibited removing the claws from cats except when medically necessary. House Bill 201 would have banned the practice 'for cosmetic or aesthetic reasons or for reasons of convenience in keeping or handling the cat.' The bill has failed to pass the Legislature several times in recent years. This year, lawmakers rejected it on a 191-177 vote. The bill would've fined violators $500 for a first violation, $1,000 for a second violation, and $2,500 for subsequent violations. Rep. Nicholas Germana, a Keene Democrat and one of the bill's sponsors, noted that the House passed the measure about two years ago with bipartisan support. 'Some of my friends who are opposed to this bill talk about it as if it were an intervention into a sacred doctor-patient relationship,' Germana said on the House floor. 'Let's be clear about something: This is not a doctor-patient relationship. This is a relationship between a veterinarian, and the patient in this case is a cat, and if we gave cats a choice I'm pretty sure that they would in fact support this legislation.' He said the bill left open the opportunity for legitimate medical interventions. Germana said veterinary professionals and members of the public testified to the House Environment and Agriculture Committee that declawing was 'simply an inhumane procedure.' The committee split on the bill, recommending on a 9-7 vote that it not pass. Those who testified against declawing in the committee hearing argued that even one unnecessary declawing was too many, and some shared that they had witnessed intense, long-lasting pain from cats who had undergone the procedure. Rep. Judy Aron, a South Acworth Republican and chair of the committee, said the bill was 'a solution in the search of a problem.' The majority of the committee voted to reject the bill, 'because there is no real need to ban this procedure or codify harsh penalties to veterinarians,' Aron said. 'We do not have any statistics that demonstrate that New Hampshire has a problem with our veterinarians performing cat declawing procedures for nonmedical reasons.' She also argued the fines would be 'really unenforceable,' because it would be difficult to prove that the veterinarian did not have a valid medical reason to perform the declawing. She also said veterinarians testified that the vast majority of professionals in the state already discourage or do not perform these procedures, and that the procedure was 'an absolute last resort.' The bill sparked passions from the public, with 168 people expressing support for the bill online and 95 signaling opposition.
Yahoo
31-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
New Hampshire lawmakers push for moratorium on new landfills until 2030
A landfill run by Casella Waste Systems in Bethlehem racked up hundreds of violations related to leachate within a year. (Photo by Claire Sullivan/New Hampshire Bulletin) Gov. Kelly Ayotte has said no landfill will be built near Forest Lake in Dalton – but what about other landfills in other places? House Bill 171 would prohibit the Department of Environmental Services from permitting a new landfill in the state until 2030. Its bipartisan group of sponsors hope hitting the pause button will allow for the state to address a myriad of solid waste issues, particularly the state's siting standards, which advocates argue are far too weak, and the hundreds of thousands of tons of out-of-state waste dumped in New Hampshire landfills each year. 'Unless and until we do our job as a Legislature and take action to address this critical issue, we should not be considering opening another landfill that is not needed for New Hampshire's solid waste needs,' said Rep. Nicholas Germana, the Keene Democrat leading the bill, at a Tuesday committee hearing. A little less than half of the trash dumped into the state's landfills comes from other states, according to a report from DES published in 2023. From 2020 to 2022, that equated to more than 2.6 million tons of outside waste. And with that trash, proponents of the bill noted, comes harmful chemicals like PFAS, which are commonly used in consumer and industrial products, and are linked to health effects including some cancers. Some nearby states prohibit the disposal of certain waste within its borders, making the Granite State the target for that trash instead. 'There are things that we can't send into Massachusetts, Vermont, or Maine that we do actually take in return, because they have regulations in place that we do not,' Germana said. Germana argued the state has ample capacity to allow for a temporary pause in building new landfills while policymakers address critical issues in the state's solid waste management. And perhaps there's no time like the present for trash issues in the state. Though legislation aimed at waste has faced an uphill battle in the Legislature, with the Senate rejecting a number of proposals over the years, there's been a shift, some of those close to the issue feel. Ayotte has expressed concern about out-of-state trash, and she vowed in her inaugural address that she would not allow a landfill to be built in the North Country near a lake and state park in Dalton – a major reversal from her predecessor, Chris Sununu. Casella Waste Systems, a Vermont-based company that has racked up hundreds of violations at its Bethlehem landfill, has been fighting for that facility for years. 'Our new governor has openly expressed her concerns about these issues, and with this new alignment of interests between this body and the governor, we are in an excellent position to take meaningful action,' Germana said. Wayne Morrison, president of the North Country Alliance for Balanced Change, a citizen group that has advocated against the landfill and for solid waste reform, said he is 'more optimistic now than ever before.' 'We've been at this for six years, and this is the most constructive, detailed, meaningful conversation I have heard at any point about the solid waste problems in the state of New Hampshire,' Morrison told lawmakers in the House Environment and Agriculture Committee. Michael Wimsatt, director of the waste management division of DES, said the agency was not taking a position on the bill. He raised some technical concerns about wording in the bill, which he said the department would work with the committee on. The legislation faces opposition from the Business & Industry Association, which includes Casella and Waste Management among its members, according to its directory. In online testimony submissions to the committee, 306 were in favor of the bill, and six were against it. Morrison urged lawmakers to be bold, courageous, and to 'stand up' to industry. 'The moratorium is a perfect opportunity to fix a bunch of things that are broken,' Morrison said. 'And I think that's out-of-state waste, I think that's leachate … I think it's PFAS, and I think it's around our site-selection process.'
