A Vt. town’s ‘beneficial’ relationship with a Casella landfill
TO THE EDITOR:
My name is Michael Marcotte, and I am a former select board member for the Town of Coventry, Vt. I served on the board for 29 years, with more than 20 years as the board chairman, just recently retiring from the board this past March.
The town of Coventry is the host community for the Casella landfill (also known as the New England Waste USA landfill) in Vermont. I have been involved with the Waste USA landfill in Coventry since its inception. As I’m sure you are well aware, Casella is proposing a new landfill to be sited in the town of Dalton, NH, and I would like to share my experience of hosting the landfill in Coventry as well as working with the management team from Casella with you.
The town’s relationship with the landfill has been productive and beneficial to the town and its residents. Among the benefits and positive additions to the town, the landfill has:
• Assisted Coventry in becoming a desirable and affordable place to live due to the fact that the financial benefits of hosting the landfill cover all of the municipal expenses.
• Enabled the town to create an actively managed investment account of over $10 million.
• Allowed the town to create capital reserve funds for such things as road improvements, equipment purchases and mitigating flooding in the downtown area.
• Enabled the creation of the Coventry Town Foundation, a nonprofit corporation run by town residents that supports education, provides scholarships, community assistance, emergency relief, historic preservation and financial assistance to low-income residents when they are in need.
• Run enrichment and educational programs with Coventry Village School and other town organizations that teach students and adults about recycling, composting and overall waste management in an effort to reduce the amount of trash going into the landfill.
• Provided recycling services, including the use of the transfer station and provided technical assistance to the town’s solid waste committee.
Landfills are complicated facilities, and there are instances where impacts from the landfill need to be addressed. When problems have arisen, Casella has worked closely with the town to find solutions. Whether it be actively monitoring and treating leachate with the emerging PFAS issues, to undertaking a very aggressive odor management program, Casella has responded.
My experience illustrates that the benefits of hosting a modern, very well-managed, state-of-the-art landfill far outweigh the costs.
MICHAEL MARCOTTE NEWPORT, VT
Cook’s ‘mysterious views’ on right and wrong
TO THE EDITOR:
Once long ago, Brad Cook, whose “Cook on Concord” column has long been a fixture in NH Business Review, told me he was an economic liberal and a social conservative, less interested in right and left than right and wrong.
If so, he has kept his convictions about right and wrong well hidden from NH Business Review readers, who might fairly conclude that whatever those convictions are, they rarely rise above room temperature.
One searches in vain for any trace of social conservatism in the columns of the well-known lukewarm Republican. His early endorsement of Joe Biden for president appears to have had little effect, since Jovial Joe finished fifth in the New Hampshire primary. But bipartisan Brad should be happy with Biden’s thinly disguised open borders policy, his canceling of the Keystone XL pipeline, his embrace of the Green New Deal without calling it that and his recent conversion to opposition to the Hyde Amendment banning federal funding of elective abortions.
Mr. Cook, who used to represent the Catholic Diocese of Manchester in Concord, may even be pleased with Biden’s stated intention to fine the Little Sisters of the Poor into oblivion for that charitable organization’s refusal to conform to the HHS-created “contraceptive mandate” in health insurance coverage for their employees.
I wonder what Mr. Cook thinks about proposals circulating in some progressive circles for the “deprogramming” and “re-education” of Trump voters so that eventually we’ll all sound like, well, Brad Cook, I guess.
And how many millions more babies will have to be aborted in the United States before a light comes on in the dimly lit corner of Brad Cook’s mind where he keeps hidden from the public, and perhaps from himself, his mysterious views of “right and wrong.”
JACK KENNY MANCHESTER
