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Claremont council supports governor’s biomass veto, opposes his solar veto

By PATRICK ADRIAN
Special to The Eagle Times
This online version corrects inaccuracies in the print version; SB 365 would support the Concord Wheelabrator plant not the shuttered Claremont plant.

CLAREMONT — Siding with concerned residents, the Claremont City Council voted unanimously last night to support the governor’s veto of a biomass bill that would have provided $8.1 million in state aid to the Wheelabrator municipal-waste-burning facility in Concord. Activists before council suggested that what was effectively a subsidy would give an undeserved clean energy image to municipal waste burning and thereby make possible the reopening of the shuttered Claremont waste-burning plant, recently sold by Wheelabrator.

The council held a one- hour special meeting to decide whether to join a mayoral petition calling for  New Hampshire legislators to override Gov. Chris Sununu’s vetoes of two  renewable energy bills, SB 446 and SB 365.  SB 446, a solar energy bill, would increase the cap on net meter solar projects — whereby solar customers sell electricity from their generators to utilities at above wholesale rate — from 1 megawatt to 5 megawatts. The increase to 5 megawatts would allow businesses with larger facilities to participate in the net metering program and bring New Hampshire’s solar program closer to those of neighboring states like Vermont. 

While supportive of  the solar bill, 11 local residents from Claremont and Charlestown voiced strong opposition to SB 365, a biomass bill that would provide approximately $75 million in additional subsidies to six biomass plants operating in the state, by requiring Eversource and other utilities to pay above-market rates to  purchase electricity from the plants.  While most of these biomass plants generate electricity through wood-burning, a late addition to SB 365 attached trash-burning technology to the state’s renewable energy index, and direct $6 million in subsidies to the Wheelabrator facility in Concord.  (The Wheelabrator plant in Claremont shut down two years ago; a new group purchased it in December for $37,000.)

The residents said that the subsidies from SB 365 could potentially enable the Claremont plant to resume operations, expressing concerns about the pollution generated by the facility in the past. 

“If you support this bill you support trash incineration,” said Charlestown resident and health advocate Katie Lajoie to the council. 

Airborne lead pollution was particularly concerning to residents. A pollutions report filed with the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services  found that one boiler at a Wheelabrator incinerator in Concord emitted 83 pounds of lead in one year, Lavoie said. 

Claremont resident Jim Contois said that any support of Wheelabrator would encourage resumption of operations in Claremont and would counter all the progress taken by the city over the past year to combat childhood lead poisoning.  

“That place put out hundreds of pounds of lead into our community out of that smokestack,” Contois said.  “We cannot afford to let that plant go back online, if we care about our children.” 

According to Mayor Charlene Lovett, the biomass industry accounts for approximately $129,000 in Claremont’s budget, between $37,000 in revenues from other towns and $94,000 in cost savings not to transport residue to outside facilities. The ash residue from biomass production is used to make fertilizer.

The council said, however,  that the cost to the city was minor in comparison to public health. 

“We’ve demonstrated our commitment to protect our citizens,” Lovett said.

Additionally, Lovett said that sustaining the governor’s veto would impact many jobs in New Hampshire, biomass is neither sustainable as an industry or an energy source.

“We’re on a precipice of a revolution in the energy market,” Lovett said. “When technology changes the law of the land, companies need to demonstrate an ability to change to survive.”

In addition to voting unanimously to recommend sustaining the governor’s veto of SB365, the council voted unanimously to recommend overriding the governor’s veto of SB 446, the solar energy bill.  Since the mayoral petition recommended overriding both bills, the council decided to share its votes with the petitioner rather than join.  The council will also share its recommendation with Claremont’s state representatives, whose House will vote whether to override the vetoes on Wednesday.

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