NEW LONDON — The New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services finalized the state’s solid waste plan last week after a draft version released in August sparked considerable pushback from some in the waste management sector.
The final plan added more precise tonnage goals to the state’s waste aims of 25% municipal solid waste reduction by 2030, and 45% by 2050, DES Waste Management Division Director Michael Wimsatt said. It also clarified that those goals include the waste that is generated beyond New Hampshire but still winds up in the state.
“Dear solid waste stakeholders,” the 38-page updated plan begins, and continues by addressing “the high level of interest and attention given to the draft plan, which confirms that the public is engaged and concerned about solid waste management in New Hampshire.”
The 18-page draft prompted just under 400 pages of public comment from 74 parties, many of whom criticized DES for not including actionable goals or concrete metrics, and urged the department to bolster its strategy by the time it would deliver a new version to the Legislature on Oct. 1.
The new plan, which is to be addressed over 10 years, focuses on limiting waste at the source, as well as increasing waste diversion in order to help get the state to its reduction goals. The finalization of the plan marks the first time the state has officially updated its waste management strategies in two decades.
But the revisions still left some stakeholders dissatisfied.
DES responded “very little” to the pushback following the release of the draft, said John Tuthill, a volunteer with Claremont-based activist group Working on Waste. Tuthill also contends the plan does not taking aggressive enough action against toxicity in the waste stream or interstate waste commerce.
Commercial landfills, which make up half of New Hampshire’s landfill stock, are authorized to receive out-of-state waste, and they profit from disposal fees: In 2020, 47% of the waste disposed of in New Hampshire came from elsewhere. Casella, a Rutland-based private waste management company that operates in the state, generated $889 million in revenues in 2021. Waste Management, another private company with a New Hampshire presence, raked in $4.3 billion that same year.
“Small states just don’t have the ability to effectively negotiate with these massive companies,” Tuthill said. “So you need to begin regulating these private companies as if they were utilities.”
State Rep. Karen Ebel, a Democrat from New London who chairs the Solid Waste Working Group, is just relieved to finally have an official plan on the books after almost two decades of delay.
“Considering where we’re starting from, we’re so far behind our neighboring states that in many ways we have to kind of start from the ground up,” Ebel said. “I think that this plan lays a groundwork for us to move forward.”
Ebel said she wants to focus on reducing the weight of waste by pushing compost initiatives — food waste is often the heaviest offender in landfills, and rotting food pushes landfills up to the third-highest emitter of methane in the United States.
Vermont’s universal recycling law makes it illegal to dispose of food waste in landfills. When the city of Lebanon decided on its own to compost the food waste it received, the city saw 30% in savings by avoiding municipal disposal costs. But Lebanon is currently one of only a few municipalities with compost programs in the state, the DES waste strategy said.
“In the final plan, we also clarified that the reality is that if you’re developing new facilities that do other things with waste, rather than burying or burning it, you’ve got to invest in new infrastructure,” said Wimsatt, the DES division director.
For Ebel, the biggest issue in the Legislature is securing the funding that could help with those infrastructural goals.
“We need to make sure the agency can do the work to support the citizens of the state,” Ebel said. Expanding the budget for the cash-strapped DES could help establish more composting infrastructure, for example. “We all have to pull together to do better as far as not throwing things in our landfill. It’s going to take a statewide effort, and help from the Legislature, and work.”
Frances Mize is a Report for America corps member. She can be reached at fmize@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.