From 1987 to 2013, a company in Claremont received and burned almost 2 million tons of solid waste, more than the city could produce in two centuries at today’s rate of waste generation. Much of that trash left town on the wind, along with the profit, helping bankrupt a local utility in the process. Looking forward, will Claremont turn away from its toxic legacy as a host community to the privately controlled, for-profit waste industry?
Today, Acuity Management Inc., a company based in Methuen, Mass., (or Boca Raton, Fla., no one’s quite sure) proposes to consolidate hundreds of tons of construction and demolition debris each day close to neighborhoods and an elementary school, then send it away by night train to some unsuspecting community in the Midwest.
Permitting a private transfer station to collect roughly half of New Hampshire’s daily generation of construction and demolition waste and bring it through Claremont to be discharged near people’s homes and businesses would be going backward.
Claremont should not do to some distant community what was done here.
Acuity wants to more than double the daily volume of waste Wheelabrator used to move into and out of the city, bringing more noise, truck traffic, runoff and dust, and threatening public health and safety. Acuity’s C&D waste operation, with its minimal capacity for sorting and recovering materials, would bring through Claremont every year about as much C&D waste as the city would generate in 75 years at today’s waste generation rates.
Getting at material before it becomes contaminated in mixed loads of waste is where a forward-looking resource management strategy should be heading. Deconstruction, source segregation and more effective materials management could reduce today’s C&D disposal rate significantly.
Not many have yet grasped the scale of Acuity’s proposed C&D waste operation or the long-term impacts on economic development for the city. Let’s learn from the past and reach for a better future for Claremont and our region.
JOHN TUTHILL
Acworth, N.H.
The writer is a former member of the New Hampshire House Environment and Agriculture Committee.
Sept. 2, Labor Day, will once again give the Upper Valley community a chance to help Headrest support its crisis hot line.
The hot line receives more than 9,000 calls a year and addresses suicide calls as well as calls from people who are experiencing a mental health or a substance use crisis. A caring, calm voice on the other end of the phone can help break that cycle and assist people in moving toward a more constructive, safer outcome. It is important to note that this year, the suicide calls remain at an all-time high.
The hot line number is 603-448-4400.
Headrest is part of the National Suicide Prevention Network at 1-800-273-TALK and certified by the American Association of Suicidology.
Onsite registration for the Rail Trail Ramble is at 8:30 a.m. on Labor Day at the head of the Rail Trail near the CCBA, or you can do online registration by going to Headrest.org. You can walk, ride or just ramble half a mile, or go all the way to Enfield, where we will award you with a piece of pie.
Come back to Lebanon’s Colburn Park and join us for a barbecue (thanks to Mascoma Bank), music and games. Be part of the bike raffle (thanks to Omer & Bob’s). Bring your family members, old and young, and join the fun.
This event will give us a chance to support the only 24/7 crisis/suicide hot line in our state. It will also give us an opportunity to stop to appreciate the hard work involved in recovery and remember those who have died as a result of suicide or an overdose.
LAURIE HARDING
Lebanon
The writer is the chair of the Headrest board of directors.
This letter is submitted to express, publicly, my deep gratitude for “the kindness of strangers,” and to lament the needless dishonesty of a Hanover merchant, who denied having placed the call leading to the towing of my car, and whose call was identified and verified by the towing company. An acknowledgment with an “I’m sorry” would have been sufficient and appropriate.
I am 86 years old and a 15-year resident of Hanover. My car has both a handicap license plate and a small Kendal resident sticker. At times, a serious left leg injury causes me pain and discomfort, and walking any distance becomes very uncomfortable. It was hurting on Aug. 17 when I attended the final play-in-progress of the New York Theater Workshop.
The sole handicap space behind the Hopkins Center for the Arts was taken, as were those across the street and behind the post office. I parked in one of the open spaces behind the stores that front on Main Street. I left the Hopkins Center to retrieve my car at approximately 9 p.m. My car was gone. The Hopkins Center was empty of people. I phoned the police, who told me they had not towed the car.
It was pure serendipity that one couple appeared and, noting the distress on my face, asked if something was wrong. I explained the situation. Their immediate response was to insist that they drive me back to Kendal.
The “thank you” I spoke grossly understated the extent of my appreciation, and underscores that, in spite of all there is to lament today in our country, the world at large and in our home communities, there are yet truly good people who do “unto others” good deeds without thought of recompense.
AUDREY M. CHERIN
Hanover