by Matt Prindiville, NRCM Toxics Project Director
Good afternoon Senator Goodall, Representative Duchesne and members of the Natural Resources Committee. My name is Matt Prindiville, and I’m the Clean Production Project Director for the Natural Resources Council of Maine (NRCM). NRCM is Maine’s leading, membership-supported environmental advocacy organization. We represent over 12,000 members and supporters and promote science-based, solutions-oriented policy on a variety of issues including energy, land conservation, river restoration and preventing toxic pollution.
We support LD 871, and we thank Representative Duchesne for bringing this issue to the attention of the committee.
Among other things, this bill seeks to ensure that the state has odor and recycling standards in place before new licensing. This is a prudent course, and the state needs to actively plan for increased recycling and odor management for solid waste disposal facilities.
From the 30,000 foot level of policy, all states should be working harder to reduce, reuse, recycle. When the legislature voted for recycling standards, the concern was about construction and demolition debris (CDD) importation. There is a larger issue in play here. When Maine engages in policies that encourage importation, it reduces the pressure on the urban areas to reduce their waste generation. In essence, rather than having Massachusetts work more energetically to solve its rapidly diminishing capacity problem, waste generators in that state pay Maine to take the problem off their hands. As a nation, we’re never going to reduce our wastefulness if we just ship the problem to rural areas, like Maine.
We urge you to support this bill. Thank you for your consideration.
