Nashua board rejects plan for asphalt plant
NASHUA — Community members sounded exasperated as they once again urged the Nashua Planning Board to reject a proposal to build an asphalt plant in a central part of the city.
This time, they got their wish.
Residents and organizers have been denouncing the site plan for months, warning that the hot mix plant would inflict environmental and economic harm on a section of the city that’s home to many minorities, immigrants, and residents with limited English proficiency. Neighbors voiced concerns about potential ill health effects due to air pollution.
“Why are we still entertaining this?” Nashua resident Jon Naso said during the board’s meeting June 15. “You need to act. You need to act and stand up and say ‘no.’”
“A man has a right to do what he wants to do with his property, but he can’t take our air,” Naso said.
Several progressive groups, including the Granite State Organizing Project, the climate-focused group 350NH, and the Conservation Law Foundation, have rallied opposition to the project. The city’s Democratic mayor, Jim Donchess, spoke out against the plant in December.
But opposition didn’t come exclusively from the political left. Paula Johnson, a Nashua resident who served as a Republican state lawmaker in Concord, was among the community members who voiced their opposition at the meeting..
Still, an attorney for Newport Construction Corporation, which proposed building the facility, argued that the organizing efforts appear to have “misled” the public to believe that the planning board could base its decision on popular opinion.
Thomas W. Hildreth, a Manchester-based attorney with the firm McLane Middleton, said the board’s site plan review wasn’t a political process. He argued that the board must approve the plant because the proposal meets all the established criteria for that property.
What’s more, Hildreth said the applicant didn’t pick this site because it is an environmentally or socially disadvantaged area. “That has nothing to do with it,” he said. Rather, the applicant sought simply to use its property to support its business.
“Asphalt is everywhere, and it has to come from somewhere,” he said, drawing murmurs and verbal retorts from the crowd.
Planning Board vice chair Adam Varley said he agreed that the review process isn’t purely democratic. The board can’t reject a proposal just because members dislike it, he said. But they can and should consider several key criteria, including whether it is consistent with the city’s master plan.
Varley said the evidence appears to be inconclusive on the site plan’s health and environmental impacts after the board heard competing testimony from experts. But the board had multiple other sufficient reasons to reject the plan, he said, citing its impact on the use of surrounding properties, its heavy truck traffic, and its inconsistency with the city’s longer-term vision for the area.
The board voted unanimously to reject the plan, drawing cheers and applause from the public.
Dan Weeks, a well-known activist whose family lives in Nashua not far from the site of the proposed plant, commended the board for taking the city’s master plan seriously and listening to the concerns of residents.
“I’m just so relieved and gratified that that vision that we crafted together as a community for the future of Nashua prevailed tonight and that we will not have a polluting industrial development in the heart of a residential neighborhood that is a diverse and low-income neighborhood that has too often been on the losing end of these environment injustices,” Weeks said.
Heidi Trimarco, a staff attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation in New Hampshire, said the proposed asphalt plant in Nashua reflects the way industrial projects are often situated in disenfranchised communities that already shoulder a disproportionate share of environmental burdens.
“It’s really important that our planning boards take that into account and not site these projects, these dirty projects, in vulnerable communities,” she said, praising the city’s Planning Board for listening to the community and making “the right decision.”
Jordan Thompson, an environmental justice advocate with the Conservation Law Foundation, said the demographics of this part of Nashua should not be overlooked.
“This kind of thing doesn’t happen by accident,” he said. “There’s a reason why this site is being proposed for an asphalt plant and not a site in Hollis or another community that’s affluent and white.”
Thompson noted that the city didn’t translate documents or meetings related to this proposal, so advocates arranged for live translation into Spanish so the impacted residents could stay informed about what was happening to their neighborhood.
Andrew Prolman, a Nashuabased attorney for the applicant, said after Thursday’s hearing that he wasn’t surprised by the board’s decision.
“The board did what they thought they had to do, and we will be assessing next steps,” he said.
Prolman said the property in question is clearly zoned as industrial, and the applicant may file an appeal in Superior Court in an effort to move forward with the project.
“A decision hasn’t been made yet,” he said.