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In a unanimous decision, a legislative committee on Thursday issued a preliminary objection to the Department of Environmental Services’ proposed updates to its landfill regulations, planning to bring the agency back for review next month.

Defenders and residents had raised concerns that the proposed regulations – which are being updated, as they should, after 10 years – were too shaped by industry and did not provide adequate protection.

Rep. Erica Layon, a Derry Republican who raised the objection motion, said the Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules received “a very, very large amount of testimony raising questions about this rule.” When the committee, which provides legislative oversight of rulemaking, met in Concord at 9 a.m., most of the audience seats were full.

Carol McGuire, the Epsom Republican who chairs JLCAR, expressed concerns about the delay in the rulemaking process but supported the preliminary objection. She said that by having DES return to JLCAR in December, the agency could “come back with some answers” about the rules, committee members could read more public testimony and “we could give it a fair chance.”

“We’ve heard enough public testimony to be concerned about the rules,” McGuire said, “and that’s why we oppose them.”

Tom Tower, vice president of the North Country Alliance for Balanced Change, a citizens group that submitted hundreds of pages to the committee outlining its objections to the rules, said JLCAR made the right choice.

“The implications of this are far-reaching for generations to come,” Tower said in an interview after the vote. “So I think they did the right thing by postponing and making sure we get it right.”

Part of the reason the proposed regulations have attracted attention is due to ongoing applications that Casella Waste Systems has filed with the state to build a new landfill in Dalton, a small northern town close to the Vermont-based company existing landfill in Bethlehem, who violated his license hundreds of times within a year.

McGuire said that by delaying the process of updating the rules, there was a risk that pending discharge permits “would be approved under the 10-year-old rules, rather than the new rules, which are more protective “. She also said that “it didn’t seem to me that many of the commenters who came back and complained about the rule really understood… how the comments were actually handled.”

Adam Finkel, a Dalton resident who spent years as chief rules writer at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said DES needs to “bring these rules into the mainstream of planet Earth.” He was among those who urged the panel to oppose it.

“On behalf of those of us who objected to the very content of the rules, we don’t think the problem has anything to do with poor explanations of the right rules,” Finkel said after the vote. “We understand every word of the (DES) response document. …It’s the weakest rule on the planet, and a better explanation won’t change that fact.

One area that has attracted criticism is the standard contained in the proposed rules regarding the degree of protection the earth barrier beneath the landfill must have. No standard exists in current rules for what’s called “hydraulic conductivity,” a number that explains how quickly liquid pollution would seep into the earth beneath the landfill’s footprint if there were a leak.

Finkel looked at more than two dozen other jurisdictions around the country and around the world with hydraulic conductivity standards, and all were stricter than what’s proposed in New Hampshire.

Under the department’s final proposal, landfills could be built on land where the original soil, going as deep as 5 feet, has a “representative saturated hydraulic conductivity” of 0.001 centimeters per second or less. Alternatively, the landfill may import a 2-foot soil base with a hydraulic conductivity of 0.0001 centimeters per second or less if other requirements are met. (The lower the rate, the slower the pollution will spread through the ground.) This second option appeared in the latest iteration of the proposed rules, with critics concerned about the lack of clarity about where the idea came from and calling it a “gap”. »

According to Finkel’s analysis, “every other jurisdiction on Earth requires imported soils to be 10 to 1,000 times more resistant to pollutant flows than DES prefers.” In other words, he said, pollution could pass through that 2-foot barrier in just eight days if there was a leak.

Layon said the panel received concerns about how these rules compared to others around the world and “how public comments were or were not listened to.” She raised her objection “on the condition that it is contrary to the public interest” and on the grounds that the proposed rules went against the intention of the legislator.

“I believe more work needs to be done to ensure that all affected voices are heard,” Layon said, “and that we understand exactly what this rule change will mean, not only for our landfills, but for people “. of New Hampshire.

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