That the NH Legislature finally seems to be focused on how and why landfills in NH are being overrun with out-of-state trash is a welcome development. Also most welcome is media scrutiny of the problem. The Jan. 1 Concord Monitor had an excellent article (“Bills target out-of-state trash”) focusing on two bills pending in the NH House that would limit the amount of out-of-state trash being trucked into and then landfilled in NH. How bad is the problem? Right now nearly half of all solid waste deposited in NH landfills comes from Massachusetts and other New England states. The reason is simple: of all New England states NH has by far the most lax landfill rules.

And as if that’s not already bad enough, it could get much worse if we don’t do something soon. Casella has just recently filed permits to build a new huge landfill (GSL) in Dalton with the promise of reserving as much as 49% of the landfill capacity for out-of-state waste. Given Gov. Sununu’s enthusiastic support of Casella and its GSL proposal, NH’s Department of Environmental Services seems to be fast-tracking approval of the GSL permits. That makes it doubly important for the NH Legislature to come up with solutions to the problem of out-of-state solid waste soon. And it makes it triply important for the Monitor and in fact all of NH’s media to focus on this problem.

Eliot Wessler

Whitefield