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New Hampshire Group Awarded $90,000 by EPA to Improve Waste Disposal in Sullivan County

Release Date: 11/04/2005
Contact Information:

Contact: David Deegan ([email protected]), EPA Office of Public Affairs, (617) 918-1017

For Immediate Release: November 4, 2005; Release # dd051103

BOSTON – As part of its new Community Action for a Renewed Environment (CARE) Cooperative Agreement Program, the Environmental Protection Agency awarded RCAP Solutions, Inc. (RCAP), of Gardner, Mass., $90,000 to improve waste disposal in Sullivan County, N.H. Additionally, EPA has made $50,000 available to support Brownfields hazardous waste site assessments in Sullivan County.

RCAP was one of 12 recipients selected to be funded by the CARE program – with total grant awards of approximately $2 million, nationwide. CARE is designed to help communities address environmental concerns by using community-based, locally-driven strategies. The program helps foster important local partnerships and encourages community groups and government to work together to achieve the common goal of reducing environmental risks from multiple routes and sources.

“This cooperative agreement with RCAP will help resolve Sullivan County’s serious, long-term waste disposal problems,” commented Robert W. Varney, regional administrator of EPA’s New England office. “By finding ways to reduce the County’s current waste stream and process it differently, RCAP and its local partners will greatly improve air and water quality and financial issues plaguing Sullivan County.”

RCAP will use the money to fund a comprehensive resource management plan in Sullivan County – a rural, lower-income region in New Hampshire. The County currently has a waste disposal system that is expensive, inefficient and a source of significant pollution in the area. Sullivan County residents pay a disproportionate share of their incomes for waste disposal, and tipping fees at the County landfills are $91 per ton – twice what other communities in the northeast region typically pay. Sullivan County currently uses a waste-to-energy incinerator, located in the Connecticut River Valley, which contributes significant quantities of air pollutants to neighboring communities, including particulate matter, nitrous oxides, sulfur dioxide and mercury. The closed landfill that stores ashes from the incinerator has also been targeted as a potential hazardous source of pollution in Claremont’s drinking water.

“This is an exciting opportunity to work with a number of people, including staff at EPA, to come up with a solution to the problems we are facing in Sullivan County as far as waste disposal and pollution prevention are concerned,” said Patrick Pinkson-Burke, RCAP’s principal investigator for the project.

RCAP intends to apply a new paradigm in solid waste management to reduce the volume of the current waste stream and how it is processed. The new system will help eliminate or modify practices which presently create air and water pollution from waste burning and deposition of waste in landfills. This new program will reduce the volume of waste and the resultant pollution through education, reuse, recovery, recycling, composting and small business incubation. It will also promote the concept of zero waste generation through educational activities geared toward reducing waste from households, industry and government. The bi-state regional agreement to deliver waste to the incinerator expires in July 2007, requiring residents to start planning now to prepare for a less polluting and more integrated comprehensive resource management plan that focuses on environmental protection, pollution prevention and diversity in management options.

RCAP plans to work with the following partners to advance the project: the Sullivan County Solid Waste Alternatives Committee, Northeast Resource Recovery Association and the Antioch New England Institute.

More information about CARE and the 12 cooperative agreements is available at: https://www.epa.gov/CARE.

Related Information:
Solid Waste Reduction and Recycling
Incinerators