Environment

As a co-sponsor of the Land and Community Heritage Investment Program bill, SB 401, I strongly support full funding at an annual level of $12 million. I worked hard to find a dedicated source of funds for LCHIP. The reality is that we have pushed our narrow based taxes to their limits. I advocate replacing the property tax as the primary source of funding for education with a personal income tax based on ability to pay. Such a plan would replace the equivalent of $10 or more in property taxes. It would also allow recently enacted increases in other taxes to be returned to the general fund (or repealed). Thus LCHIP could be funded from the general fund or by dedicating less than half of the recent increase in the real estate transfer tax.

Reducing our reliance on property taxes will reduce the pressure on some to sell and develop land. The state should take a lead in helping towns to manage sprawl. I chair a study committee on state wireless communications policy that is looking at how to balance and improve state policy to preserve scenic values by promoting less visually intrusive alternatives to tall lattice towers.

Following is a letter to the editor on the sludge issue, now appearing in several papers, with links to the bills referenced. More on this issue will be added shortly. For links to more info on sludge, go to LINKS.

Jim Rubens, who is challenging my re-election as State Senator, recently wrote a rather odd letter to the editor. He asserted that I had made false claims, “attacked” him for his position on sludge, and engaged in “name-calling.” None of that is true. Perhaps Mr. Rubens has confused me with others who have been critical of his statements. I had made no public comment on this issue during this campaign before his last letter was published.

At its worst, the spreading of sludge, when contaminated by toxic chemicals or dangerous pathogens, can cause serious pollution and endanger public health. At its best, reuse of solids from waste water can be a beneficial way to recycle vast quantities of nutrients that we humans, at the top of the food chain, produce as part of our natural biology. Throughout ecological systems, one organism’s waste is another’s source of nutrition. Sludge that meets rigorous standards for beneficial reuse, “biosolids,” can be more a environmentally sound way to help build healthy soils than some alternatives like commercial fertilizers or, in the case of site reclamation, the application of top soil stripped from other land.

We must, of course, work to ensure that only beneficial biosolids are land applied in New Hampshire and that any contaminated sludge is properly disposed of in lined landfills. Reduction and prevention of contaminants is critical and the subject of SB 384, of which I was a sponsor.

I appreciate and share Mr. Rubens’ passion for a clean environment and the protection of public health, but passion must be tempered with reason and common sense. Our public policy decisions must be informed by good science. I am an environmentalist and have long believed that we are stewards of God’s sacred creation, this beautiful earth, and we must work to evolve our economy into one that is ecologically sustainable, improving the quality of our air, water and lands, for the sake of present and future generations.

I am proud of my environmental record as a legislator. I was a sponsor of SB 401, establishing the NH Land and Community Heritage Investment Program, a program to preserve and protect special places. I have been a sponsor of numerous bills to reduce pollutants, including phase-out of MTBE in gasoline (SB71), prevention of MTBE contamination of water (SB 70 and HB1414); and mercury source and emission reduction (HB 1418 and HB 625), among others. I have testified before the US Congress on the need to reduce emissions from dirty coal burning power plants and to promote energy efficiency and conservation.

I voted in favor of HB 1342 to develop concentration limits for certain compounds in land applied sludge that even the EPA and other states don’t limit. My vote was one of the exact two thirds necessary to override the Governor’s veto of 2 bills (HB 648 and HB 1343) that make available $105,000 for ongoing random and research testing of biosolids.