Parts of the green economy aren’t that pretty, but they are green

By Bill Chaisson
By Bill Chaisson

I think of myself as an environmentalist. As a teenager I was active in the campaign to clean up the Hudson River through participation in the sloop Clearwater organization. After college I spent three years as a fundraiser and campaign worker for Greenpeace New England. During graduate school I did research for the Radioactive Waste Campaign, an offshoot of the Sierra Club, worked for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Management on the Atlantic salmon restoration project, and for a contractor to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service making wetlands maps. As an academic geologist I did research and wrote papers about the evolution of our present climate system.

And yet, as I watched a recording of the most recent Claremont planning board meeting, read the account of their tour of the American Recycling site, and then read Jim Contois’ letter (below), I found myself siding with American Recycling. I don’t find their name to be contradictory or some sort of confidence game; they really are separating recyclable materials out of construction and demolition materials. They are a green company.

Is it possible for an advanced Western country with 327 million people living in it to not generate construction and demolition materials? No. For decades every bit of this material was either carted off to a landfill or simply buried in a hole on site. The fact that we now have companies like American Recycling who are redirecting metal (mostly) out of the waste stream is a good thing. I don’t understand why people would object to having a business like this active in Claremont. Green business isn’t always attractive business. It doesn’t always take place in a storefront or an office park.

The site of the proposed recycling site is on Industrial Boulevard, a spur off Plains Road near the Amtrak station and the airport. This part of the city was zoned for industrial use several decades ago. Since that time, the residential development in Claremont has sprawled outward to this area. In the 19th century housing was built on quarter-acre plots within walking and trolley distance of the mills. After the advent of private automobile use by ordinary people (thank you, Henry Ford), residences were built further and further from places of employment, mostly on what was once farmland. This pattern has been followed all over the country, and Claremont is no exception.

Residential neighborhoods were constructed between Maple Avenue and the bluff that falls down into the valley that has been the location of a railroad spur since the 19th century. With the contraction of industry around here the railroad fell into disuse and much of it is now the Woodman Trail. The industrial zone around the airport represents a relocation of local manufacturing out of the Victorian buildings downtown and into huge metal sheds near the rail line, the airport and the interstate.

Anyone who expects to live in peace and quiet near a rail line and an airport in an industrial zone has made a mistake. That area is supposed to be the engine of our local economy. It is supposed to provide jobs and a tax base. Claremont has actually done rather well at retaining a manufacturing and industrial sector. In many places this part of the economy has simply disappeared and been replaced by office parks full of people staring at computers … or by nothing at all.

Most New England towns used to be humming with economic activity, a combination of agriculture and small industry. There was no zoning and people simply put up with noise and smells and dirt. Agriculture might have gone away because the farming was better elsewhere, but industry mostly left because of regulation. Lax labor and environmental laws in the South caused American factories to relocate to remain solvent. Of course, regulation in developing countries is even more lax, so now we live in the “global economy.”

The slow disappearance of agricultural and industrial activity resulted in peace and quiet in the Northeast, but we can’t pretend that we’ve become a green economy simply by putting the noisy, smelly, dirty activity somewhere else. The solar panels that are so popular now are mostly made in China, undoubtedly under conditions that would not be tolerated here. So, where should we be doing our recycling? Why not in Claremont? Why not on a parcel zoned for industrial use?

We have environmental regulations now and we have regulations that control commerce (truck routes, hours of operation, et al.). I can’t fault the residents at the planning board who didn’t fully trust that these would be strictly observed. Following the rule of law in New Hampshire isn’t as widespread as it is elsewhere. Let’s face it, we’ve got a state government that ignores the rule of law when it comes to funding public schools. But American Recycling has shown that they run a tight ship in their existing facility and they are asking for no variances; the planned activity is quieter than the previous one on the site. Does that mean that we don’t need to keep an eye on them? Absolutely not.

Bill Chaisson is the editor of the Eagle Times.