Ken Wells' Report from Concord 
written March 19, 2019
published in the April 2019 issue of the Andover Beacon
​

During the last few weeks, the House has voted on hundreds of bills. There are several dozen bills still to go before the deadlines looming late in March. Some bills were passed or shot down on quick voice votes, and others had hours of speeches and debate. Here are a few highlights, and I apologize that there isn’t time or space to summarize all the important work being done.


The House passed a bill to help fund education and provide some relief from local property taxes. In this bill, money is raised for education by extending the current 5% tax on interest and dividends, to capital gains on the sale of stocks and securities.  This would effect some very wealthy individuals who make more than $25,000 in capital gains alone, and would generate tens of millions of dollars. 


A bill that failed was an attempt to abolish the State-Wide Education Property Tax (SWEPT). While this bill, HB676, aimed to reduce local property taxes, the bill did not have a way to prevent the $363 million loss of school revenue caused by abolishing SWEPT from falling right back onto the towns. Work to lower property taxes while properly funding adequate public education is continuing; I’ve attended working sessions as the Education Committee’s bills are vetted by Finance and I hope there will be good news to report next month.
  
The House protected our local environment and jobs by blocking HB157, another attempt to kill the biomass energy industry in New Hampshire. As you recall, last fall the legislature overrode the Governor’s veto of SB356. In overriding the veto, they restored the market for wood chips produced by our local forest industry. Opponents of wood chip-fired biomass power plants tried again this session to kill it, by essentially halving the price paid for biomass - so low it would be uncompetitive with natural gas. At such a low price, it would be unprofitable to chip and transport the wood waste out of the forest. It’s important to consider that natural gas, while cheap, is not a New Hampshire product, so purchasing it sends money out of our state. In contrast, wood chip biomass is a local product, and purchasing it puts dollars in New Hampshire forest workers’ pockets and helps maintain the health of our timberlands by removing the slash that would otherwise increase fire danger if it remained in the forest. 


The House passed HB166 to continue the Public Utility Commission’s role in negotiating fair electric rates with the utilities and in funding energy efficiency programs. Many Andover area residents will recognize NHSaves and Weatherize Kearsarge as energy efficiency programs supported by this legislation. (There are often Beacon articles about these programs, if you want to find out how they can help you too, to save energy and money!)


The House ensured all people would be protected from discrimination by passing HB446 which makes it easier to change gender markers on birth certificates. 


The House voted to enact HB186 for a minimum wage in New Hampshire. This will help families afford a good place to live, put food on their table and purchase goods and services. Families having more money to spend will help stimulate our economy as well. Wages will increase yearly from today’s $7.25/hour, to $9.50, then $10.75 and $12.00. It is important to know that an exemption was made for seasonal farm workers, so local farms will not be severely impacted.




The House has a visionary role as well as well, gazing three decades into the future.  The House voted to establish a committee to study how New Hampshire can move toward generating at least half of its energy from renewable sources by 2040.  It is exciting to imagine that New Hampshire, long famous for the high winds screaming across Mt Washington, also has access to North America’s best off-shore wind resource, 10 to 50 miles off our coast, beyond the horizon and the Isle of Shoals. Offering more potential power than 160 Seabrook nuclear power plants, it’s not too far-fetched to imagine a determined New Hampshire becoming the “Kuwait of Wind”! Developing this resource would ensure decades of maritime activity in northern New England’s only deepwater port, Portsmouth, with lots of high-paying jobs throughout the state for our tech and construction workforce, and plenty of jobs feeding, housing, educating and entertaining that workforce.


As I write this, your representatives have been putting in extra-long days to get bills through second committees, racing to complete all the House bills before the deadline just ahead. (I’m certainly glad that my home is in Andover, and not many hours drive from the State House, as is the case for many representatives! ) Tomorrow there will be forty-one bills heard, and I want to say thank you to the many people who have phoned or written to let me know their points of view on many of these important issues. As always, you can call me at 735-5756 or email at kenwells3@gmail.com


Ken Wells

HB 358 - An act relative to the combustion of wood residue at municipal waste combustors.

MAJORITY REPORT: OUGHT TO PASS (11-9): 
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you colleagues for two minutes of your kind attention.
​
This bill, HB358, protects public health by closing loopholes that allow the incineration of construction and demolition debris (known as CDD). Current law [RSA 125-C:10-c] permits burning CDD in municipal waste “trash to power’ plants like the one in Penacook. 

What is CDD? CDD or “construction and demolition debris” is the scrap produced when a building is bulldozed, and the wood scrap is picked out with an excavator, along with masonry dust, painted wood, arsenic pressure-treated wood and plywood. Such debris, even when “cleaned” to current EPA standards, is still allowed to contain a mixture of questionable “grit”, “fines”, arsenic-treated wood and lead paint which make it unsuitable for burning. 

There is no healthy or safe level for arsenic or lead - these are cumulative poisons that stay in your body forever if you consume or breathe them. Lead has long been known to cause profound impairment of mental development in children. 

This bill “ought to pass”, because it removes existing language in current law allowing the lax limit of [quote] “no more than 10,000 tons per year” of CDD to be combusted. Ten thousand tons per year! Even at the contamination limits allowed by EPA for so-called “cleaned” CDD, burning 10 thousand tons of CDD permits the release of as much as 500 pounds of lead each year into the air. The lead that escapes up the chimney will rain down, blanketing downwind communities. Those lead atoms will not dissipate or become harmless over time. It becomes dangerous again whenever contaminated dust is stirred up on a playground, or it is absorbed by the crops in a vegetable garden.

You should be aware that synonyms for incineration are “pyrolysis” and “gasification”, but no matter which fancy word is used, current law ensures that end result is no better than plain old “burning” - 500 pounds of lead is still allowed to be released into the air annually, to rain out over downwind communities. HB358 fixes this, by removing exceptions in current law allowing pyrolysis or gasification of CDD as alternatives to combustion, as these essentially make a distinction without a difference. 

Of course, burning untreated wood waste (like branches, wood chips, etc.) and eligible biomass fuels are specifically allowed, as is the collection of methane landfill gas derived from authorized waste facilities.

Lead in its solid form is not water soluble and will reside in a landfill forever without risk of flowing unexpectedly to another place. But some would say that “we cannot afford to send this contaminated wood waste to landfills”, or that “we can save money by incinerating it along with municipal trash”.  How many dollars do we think we can save by cutting corners on proper disposal of CDD? Are those savings worth imperiling our health, and the health of our towns’ children for untold years?

Please protect our communities’ health, and support the majority’s recommendation for OTP on HB358.  Thank you.