By GLYNIS HART
[email protected]
UNITY – The Town of Unity is planning to fix a bumpy, pitted two-mile stretch of Center Road toward Carroll Brook Road, which will involve taking out around 100 trees in order to widen the road.
While some people have suggested giving the harvested trees to the highway workers — an issue that has not been decided — the bigger problem is what to do with the stumps.
The New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services (DES) regulates the disposal of stumps as a solid waste activity. However, a DES handout available at the meeting makes clear that if the stumps are chipped for use as fuel, mulch, animal bedding or a bulking agent for compost, they’re no longer considered solid waste, but a new product. Therefore the DES encourages chipping, rather than burying the stumps.
When stumps are buried on the same land they were cleared from, DES also exempts them from solid waste rules, as long as they’re 75 feet from drinking water supplies and the local municipality approves.
As Unity road workers widen Center Road, they’re going to end up with around 100 stumps. At the Sullivan County Board of Commissioners meeting on Monday, the commissioners heard from Town of Unity select board member John Callum, who continued a conversation between the county and town as to what to do with all the stumps.
The town had proposed burying the stumps near where they’re removed, building up the embankment by Center Road in order to make it wider. County Manager Derek Ferland and several of the commissioners had attended the Unity select board meeting to discuss the issue.
However, Callum addressed the commissioners on Monday to say the select board’s intentions had been misunderstood. “Plan A was always to take the stumps to the storage field up by the landfill [on Mica Mine Road]. It’s just a longer haul.
“What we were thinking was that maybe, if the county saw fit, we could build a stump dump by the wall [to help widen Center Road]. The issue is, it’s narrow, and especially in winter it’s dangerous. It’s an issue for the trucks, if one’s coming up and one’s going the other way, one has to back down. Putting the stumps in there and banking them in would be a nice benefit to the county. That was Plan B,” said Callum. “We were only asking because we thought it was a viable alternative.”
However, the county wasn’t enthusiastic. Lionel Chute, the district manager of the Sullivan County Conservation District, said once the county looked into the regulations it became an issue of complying with state law.
“If anything goes wrong with a stump dump, the state will come after the landowner [the county],” said Chute.
Commissioner Jeff Barrette said, “I don’t necessarily want to take on that burden. It’s not in the taxpayers’ interest.”
Callum then left the meeting. The Unity select board will continue discussing what to do with the stumps at its next meeting, Monday July 23 at 4 p.m. in the town office building on Center Road.
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