Nancy Carbonneau Morrison resides in Mont Vernon and Whitefield. She believes we all rise or fall at the protection or peril of one another.

I love New Hampshire, I have 70 years’ worth of love for the state. It is my deep sense of place. I love the people, the land, the clean air and water and the wildlife that shares all this with us. New Hampshire is everyone’s backyard, and we are all just upstream or downwind from one another. What makes New Hampshire unique and precious is worth fighting for, as any area’s diminishment lessens the state as a whole.

So, when I recently read about what’s happening in Claremont, my deep sense of place suddenly included them.

Claremont is at a critical crossroad in being able to protect its people and environment. And they need help.

Acuity Management, based in Massachusetts, has applied for a “modification” to the 1987 permit that presently allows them to operate a limited-use, one-acre recycling center in order to bring in 500 tons of construction and demolition debris a day. A day.

Theoretically, employees would “recycle” what they could from crushed building materials and then load what is left — a good part of it — onto nearby railway cars to be shipped out of state. This material would have the strong potential to include PFAS, heavy metals and toxins just by the very nature of their composition, some of which may be unknown. No doubt out-of-state debris would be included.

Many concerned and informed citizens of Claremont believe that this modified recycling center permit would actually create a transfer station for construction debris on a postage stamp-sized site which happens to be less than a mile away from an elementary school, 400 homes, Meadow Brook which feeds into the Connecticut River, an aquifer and wetlands.

Recently, approximately 400 of those concerned citizens crowded into the Claremont Opera House, and 48 of them spoke to the undoubtedly devastating effects this project would have on public health and the environment. Their concerns included the impact of dozens of daily trucks delivering construction material over already fragile town roads, the cost to taxpayers for repairing those roads, the impact on air quality from diesel fumes, potential water contamination caused by rain runoff through the debris, noise pollution, odor and traffic congestion. Property values would certainly not benefit.

The New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services (DES) is now tasked with deciding if this project meets its regulations and guidelines, including the aspect of “public benefit,” for the state.

If DES performs its due diligence and implements any needed discretion the New Hampshire Supreme Court has granted them on such projects, it will prevent this poorly sited, poorly planned endeavor from proceeding. This is an inappropriate location for a project of this magnitude with its deeply problematic components. Though this business may belong somewhere, it does not belong down the street from Maple Avenue Elementary School, water bodies and hundreds of homes.

Bad plan, wrong place. The citizens of Claremont have said no, the Selectmen, the Zoning Board and the Planning Board have said no, the Conservation Committee has said no and several local state lawmakers have said no. DES has the regulations, discretion, power and responsibility to say no, too.

Proactively speaking, thank you NHDES for doing your job.