New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu has vetoed a bill that would have tightened the permitting process for new landfills in New Hampshire. House Bill 1454 would have repealed the standard 200-foot buffer between a landfill and a lake, river or coastline in New Hampshire and replaced it with a site-specific evaluation that took into account the flow of groundwater.
The bill was written in response to a proposed controversial landfill next to Forest Lake State Park in Dalton. In his veto message on Friday, Governor Sununu said he agreed with experts at the Department of Environmental Services that the bill would have been better suited as a study.
“It is extremely likely this bill would curtail landfill development in the state and lead to New Hampshire’s waste to be transported out of state, creating higher costs and property taxes for our citizens,” he wrote. The governor also said the requirements of the bill would have likely prevented construction of some of the seven lined landfills currently operating in the state.