Also on today’s menu:
Toxic Chemicals
Storing Energy
Most news articles articles get little response from readers, but occasionally a story hits on an area where there is a lot of interest, and letters pour in. Such was the case with my coverage of a hearing on Senate Bill 379, which is among more than 30 legislative bills being considered this session to deal with solid waste and pollution management.
On Feb. 2, Sen. David Watters (D-Dover) appeared before the Senate Ways and Means Committee to discuss his bill, which would establish a solid waste fund supported by a waste disposal surcharge. Watters also introduced an amendment in response to concerns that the surcharge would not get support from Governor Chris Sununu and others, so the amendment calls for a $500,000 state appropriation to put the program in place.
The bill as originally drafted would establish a $1.50 per ton surcharge on all solid waste going to landfills, incinerators, or waste-to-energy plants, except that used as cover material. The money would go into a dedicated fund that would rebate that surcharge to municipalities and provide matching grants to enhance source reduction and recycling efforts. It also would provide money to the Department of Environmental Services to help cover administrative costs and implementation of solid waste technical assistance, planning, and regulatory activities.
The story went up on the InDepthNH.org website yesterday afternoon, and this morning I already had responses in my in-box:
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Well, I read with dismay — not your coverage, which was spot on — about Sen Watters’ bill. Nothing has changed over the years with not only the General Court but the Governor’s office and DES dragging their feet over this issue.
“We” knew ages ago that the “Wisconsin” ruling considered waste a commodity and precluded charging for trash from out of state when the same requirements were not applied to instate solid waste. Simple as that.
The state, which is perpetually running out of landfill capacity, needs to apply far more stringent recycling requirements, but it won’t. There is no willpower, and the legislature is held in thrall to special interests including the BIA and trash haulers.
I had been working on different bottle bills in the legislature, the first of which John Lynch’s office lobbied against — the last of which was when I had left. The last one — a more conventional 5¢ deposit bill actually would have made money for the state even after removing the wholesale tax on beer. Part of those funds would have set up a composter in every town and city as well as reduce the amount of plastic bottles by two thirds that otherwise are part of the waste stream, many of which find their way to landfills.
Jay Phinizy
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We have proposed that the landfill waste be gasified & converted to usable synthetic products. At Public hearings, like in Milford, the People liked the idea. None of the Environmentalists & none of those in the Legislature will support such an effort.
Apparently the Public mind set is to raise taxes & hire more bureaucrats to develop more controls & rules, without thinking that any tax goes to the politicians/gov. people which allows them to spend more money, which is just another tax on the taxpayers.
Why is it that people don’t want to eliminate landfills?
Bill Fortune
Industrial Consultants
Lee
Toxic Chemicals
The legislature also is considering bills dealing with per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Sarah Doll, national director of the Safer States network, announced just this morning that those cancer-linked compounds known as “forever chemicals” will be the top focus of state-level toxic chemical policies in 2022.
“State legislatures recognize the severity of the toxic PFAS crisis we’re facing and they’re taking action,” Doll said.
PFAS, which are used in in a wide range of household goods, as well as a type of foam used to fight jet-fuel fires, can linger in the human body and in the environment, and are linked to kidney cancer, thyroid disease, and other illnesses.
Storing Energy
Dan Gearino reports in Inside Clean Energy that a group of seven nonprofit power providers in California have reached an agreement with a developer to build a solar and wind storage system that would run for up to eight hours on a charge using lithium-ion batteries. While the technology has been around for decades and is used in electric vehicles and shorter-duration batteries, it is not often used for battery systems that run longer than four hours.
Gearino learned of other places where long-lasting lithium batteries are in use or in development. National Grid’s eight-hour battery went online in 2019 in Massachusetts. The Waiawa Phase 2 project on the island of Oahu in Hawaii is being developed by AES Distributed Energy. LS Power plans to use batteries alongside the company’s Ravenswood power plant in Queens, New York.
“While there are few long-duration projects that use lithium-ion batteries, it’s important to specify that there are few long-duration battery projects, period. This is a new part of the clean energy economy,” Gearino writes.
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