“Building landfills just does not incentivize the actions you want to see. When you build this capacity, you’re not going to be recycling or composting or diverting as much as you should be,” Blair says.
“We consider this an imminent threat,” Campbell said. “That’s why we bought the lawsuit. And we have brought similar lawsuits at similar facilities.”
ISO-NE needs to change its rules and stop creating barriers that lock out renewable energy.
“Unfortunately, rather than stop the problem, the DEP and the towns are continuing to approve and authorize systems that are known to pollute and don’t work on the Cape,” Kilian said.
“People come to the Cape from throughout the world because of its amazing natural resources and water quality,” Kilian said. “The unfortunate reality is that we’re killing the goose that laid the golden egg.”
“This ad hoc, parcel-by-parcel, project-by-project resilience approach is not a long-term solution,” she said, asking instead for “a better strategy” to bring the development community into conversation and leverage new development to build protections that benefit the entire neighborhood.
Melissa Paly, the Great Bay-Piscataqua Waterkeeper with the Conservation Law Foundation, said it didn’t help that for years, towns and stakeholders fought over who was responsible and who should pay. Now, they’re finally ready to get to work on more ambitious solutions.
The Conservation Law Foundation called for state officials to “prohibit or suspend distribution and use of Anvil, Mavrik, Permanone, and any other pesticides shown to contain PFAS” and to develop a plan to test all pesticide products registered in Rhode Island for PFAS contamination.
“Right now they are operating those facilities in violation of the Endangered Species Act, because they don’t have authorization to kill Atlantic salmon, which is what their dams do,” said Sean Mahoney, executive vice president of the Conservation Law Foundation. “So they need to apply to get that authority or they need to remove the cause of the killing or taking of Atlantic salmon, which are the four dams.”
Modernizing the bottle bill will not instantly solve every part of Connecticut’s waste crisis, but it is a proven, cost-effective step forward at a time when the state needs to take advantage of every tool in its toolbox. We can—and must—protect our communities and our environment, and save money, by reducing and diverting waste and improving recycling. This legislation is key to these efforts.
