Latest news with #HouseBill566
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
11-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Legislation requiring details on handling of ‘trash juice' approved by NH House
Harmful chemicals from trash seep into leachate, meaning its mismanagement can pose serious environmental and public health risks. (Photo by Dana Wormald/New Hampshire Bulletin) The House approved a bill Thursday fueled by issues at landfills in the state managing leachate, or the 'trash juice' created when rain mixes with waste. The state already requires landfill applicants to create plans for managing leachate, but House Bill 566 would require more details about the treatment of that liquid pollution and transportation for those that treat it off site. This legislation 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. Harmful chemicals from trash seep into leachate, meaning its mismanagement can pose serious environmental and public health risks. Those risks were put on display last year when the Department of Environmental Services found several landfills in the state failing to manage leachate as required. That included hundreds of violations in Bethlehem at the landfill run by Vermont-based Casella Waste Systems. The House approved the bill on a voice vote of the consent calendar, meaning the committee recommendation to pass the legislation was OK'd without debate, among a host of other bills. The House Finance Committee, as well as the House Environment and Agriculture Committee, recommended the bill unanimously. 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. The bill is one of several this year aimed at waste issues. Two of those bills — House Bill 171, to establish a three-year moratorium on new landfills, and House Bill 707, which aims to strengthen the state's siting standards for landfills — will appear before a Senate committee on Tuesday. The chamber has traditionally been a hurdle to waste legislation.
Yahoo
29-01-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
With ‘trash juice' bill, lawmakers seek safer management of landfill leachate
Jon Swan, of Dalton, founder of Save Forest Lake, speaks at a legislative hearing on Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2024. (Claire Sullivan | New Hampshire Bulletin) When North Country advocate Wayne Morrison became involved in waste issues years ago, he thought about the immediate, visible impacts of a landfill: the 'mountain of trash,' the noise, the scavenger birds, the traffic. What wasn't on his mind was what he described as an invisible danger: leachate, or the so-called 'trash juice' created when rain and snow mix with waste. It's a 'cocktail of heavy metals, toxins, (and) PFAS' that the state's landfills produce millions of gallons of each year, Morrison said. Failures at several landfills around the state to properly manage leachate – including one in the small, northern town of Bethlehem that racked up hundreds of violations within a year – have brought legislative attention to the issue. Through House Bill 566, a bipartisan group of lawmakers want to make permit applicants think harder about how they'll manage leachate, including after the closure of their proposed facilities. 'I have come to learn that leachate is much greater risk to our health and our safety than that mountain of trash that we can all see very visibly,' said Morrison, president of the North Country Alliance for Balanced Change, a citizen group focused on solid waste issues, in a hearing Tuesday on the bill. Leachate is typically trucked or piped to wastewater treatment facilities, meaning its potential impact on public health and the environment isn't confined to the footprint of a landfill. Advocates have raised concerns about the further spread of the persistent class of man-made chemicals known as PFAS, which are linked to serious health effects, including some cancers. 'I am guessing that your constituents near those wastewater treatment plants have no idea what's being released,' Morrison told lawmakers. It also intersects with another environmental issue: climate change. Addressing leachate management has been made more pressing by frequent and intense storm events, said Rep. Nicholas Germana, the Keene Democrat leading the bill. Landfills are required by the state to keep leachate levels below 1 foot on their liners, a task made more difficult by extreme rainfall. The state already requires landfills to make certain plans around the management of leachate. Operators must 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 the Department of Environmental Services. 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. This bill seeks to create more comprehensive requirements for leachate management, including by making applicants plan for it in the post-closure life of their proposed landfills. It also would put the requirement for leachate plans into state law, rather than existing only in the agency's rules. That distinction can be meaningful, said Michael Wimsatt, director of DES' solid waste management bureau. 'I think what it really does is just puts the current practice into law, and in our experience with respect to doing compliance assurance and enforcement, having provisions directly in statute is powerful,' Wimsatt said. 'You have to do it carefully, because you can't have statutes that are so lengthy and detailed that they're going … to look like administrative rules, but for certain things, it's nice to have that clear, explicit authority in the statute.' Wimsatt said the department was not taking a position on the bill. Lawmakers questioned the bureau head on the department's enforcement of its rules around leachate. They pointed specifically to the Bethlehem landfill run by the Vermont-based company Casella Waste Systems, which the department found failed hundreds of times to keep leachate to its required levels and to file mandatory reports, data, and investigations with the state. These issues – as well as others at different facilities – were outlined in letters of deficiency the department sent to landfill operators last year. One facility with 'significant violations' related to keeping leachate to required levels was referred to the Department of Justice for enforcement, Wimsatt said without explicitly naming the facility. He indicated he was limited in his ability to speak further on the topic. Public records show that Casella was preparing for a site visit from the DOJ and DES in September. In an October response to a public records request from the Bulletin, DES said it 'cannot comment on the purpose of this meeting and has no responsive documents to this request.' Wimsatt told lawmakers Tuesday that 'it disadvantages the state's case whenever a state employee who's involved in enforcement discusses publicly the details of that case.' Talking about enforcement generally, Wimsatt said there are provisions that allow applicants to request a waiver if they feel they can't comply with a specific rule. If certain criteria are met, the department may approve that request – but such waivers are granted sparingly, Wimsatt said. He said he doesn't believe the department has received any applications to waive leachate management rules, and that DES 'always endeavors to enforce all of its rules, including the leachate rules.' Natch Greyes, vice president of public policy for the Business & Industry Association, said the group opposed the bill and questioned whether it was necessary considering existing regulations on the issue. 'I'm not sure what this legislation adds to the regulatory framework, other than to freeze it in place,' Greyes said. That position would likely not change even following proposed changes to the bill that Germana described at the start of the hearing, Greyes said. The lawmaker said he planned to make several changes to the bill following conversations with officials at DES and the Turnkey landfill in Rochester run by Waste Management. For instance, he would seek to take out language that he said would require applicants to demonstrate they had contracts running 20 or 30 years into the future. Instead, Germana said, they would have to demonstrate a plan for managing the specifics laid out in the bill but not those long-term contracts. Germana also said he would, at the suggestion of DES, seek an amendment to also include applications to expand existing landfills under the parameters of the bill. He argued the bill 'does not in any way hamper innovation,' and that it will allow facilities to adjust their leachate management practices as the industry develops, pointing specifically to evolutions around treating PFAS. Tom Tower, vice president of the North Country Alliance for Balanced Change, urged lawmakers to prioritize the issue. 'Every bill that comes before, you know, this committee is important – and I've seen an awful lot of them over the years – but not all of them are urgent,' he said. 'This one is urgent.'
