Turning a Spotlight on New Hampshire's Waste Crisis: CLF is taking aim at regulators who have failed to follow the law.

• Author: Synoracki, Olivia
• Position: COMMUNITY

WHEN FIRST BUILT IN 1976, NEW HAMPSHIRE'S BETHLEHEM LANDFILL WAS JUST A LOCAL DUMP--400 X 400 FEET IN TOTAL. But thanks to large corporate waste companies with aggressive growth plans, the landfill has swelled in size. Today, it covers 50 acres and buries 175,000 tons of trash each year.

The State of New Hampshire recently gave the landfill's current owner, a subsidiary of Casella Waste Systems, permission to expand the site again--over the objections of residents, as well as CLF, which has appealed the permit to the state's Waste Management Council.

For longtime resident Julie Seely, it's frustrating to see the landfill allowed to grow even more. Her town of Bethlehem has been a hub for outdoor enthusiasts who flock to the popular White Mountain National Forest (two-thirds of the town lie within the forest boundaries) and Ammonoosuc River. "Inviting a business, such as a landfill, [to town] is just completely incongruous with our history and future of being a great outdoor activity center," says Seely.

The landfill puts the river and forest at risk--from the waste trucks hauling trash through town to the toxic leachate spills that put groundwater and the river at risk. Just this past May, one of the landfill's leachate tanks overflowed, spilling more than 150,000 gallons of contaminated liquid into a nearby stormwater detention pond--just a short distance from the Ammonoosuc.

Unfortunately, Bethlehem's story is not unique. New Hampshire is home to six active landfills--some of which have bloated in size over the years. The Turnkey Landfill, located in Rochester and already New England's largest, also has been approved for yet another expansion. What's more, state regulators are considering Casella's proposal for an entirely new landfill on an undeveloped site near Forest Lake State Park in Dalton. If approved, the landfill would sit on 137 acres--destroying over 17 acres of wetlands --and accept nearly 18 million tons of trash over its proposed 38-year lifespan.

Just how much trash is New Hampshire generating that it needs another landfill? In 2018, the last year for which data is available, the state's landfills buried nearly 2.4 million tons of trash. But that's not the full story, because almost half of that was shipped in from out of state.

In Seely's hometown of Bethlehem, more than 30% of the waste buried there in 2018 was imported. "New Hampshire seems to be the go-to place for waste companies to come and grow and build new...