PORTSMOUTH – The Coakley Landfill Group (CLG) is paying a lobbyist it hired $4,000 a month for up to five months, City Attorney Robert Sullivan told the City Council Monday night.
Sullivan said the CLG hired the lobbyist because there were a number of items introduced in the state Legislature this year that were “aimed at the Coakley Landfill Group by name.”
Sullivan, who also serves on the CLG’s executive committee, said the group hired the lobbyist “to find out what the proposals were about.”
The lobbyist was hired “to perform whatever services are needed,” Sullivan added during Monday night’s City Council meeting.
Sullivan’s comments came during a lengthy presentation about the Coakley Landfill, a Superfund clean-up site in North Hampton and Greenland, and the CLG.
The Coakley landfill is a 27-acre site that accepted waste from 1972 to 1982 and then incinerator waste until 1985.
Some residents have been upset by the CLG’s decision to hire the lobbyist, who state Rep. Mindi Messmer, D-Rye, said told her he was hired to fight against her CLG-related legislation.
The lobbyist has denied this.
Sullivan recently testified against a bill that Messmer and other Seacoast lawmakers have sponsored calling for the CLG to fall under the provisions of the state Right to Know Law.
Assistant Mayor Cliff Lazenby pointed out that when Sullivan testified in Concord he “wasn’t acting on behalf” of something the City Council approved.
He suggested that because Sullivan works for both the city and CLG, it makes sense for the council to “pass a more specific set of principles” to guide when staff can lobby for or against legislation.
Other residents have been troubled by the lack of details concerning how much money the CLG – and Portsmouth taxpayers - have spent on remediation at the site.
Sullivan has repeatedly said the group has spent about $27 million on remediation at the site with roughly $13 million coming from city taxpayers.
But there has been no formal accounting of how the money was spent during the past 27 years.
The CLG is made up of municipalities and groups that used the landfill including companies that transported trash there.
The entities have been required to pay into a trust created through a 1991 Record of Decision by the EPA and DES. The city of Portsmouth is required to pay 53.6 percent of remediation costs.
Sullivan acknowledged Monday that the $13 million estimate is not accurate.
“The actual city expense is lower than that,” Sullivan said, after first pointing out that when he went to Boston College “I was an English major.”
City Manager John Bohenko said during a break it is unclear how much Portsmouth taxpayers have paid to the CLG over its existence.
In his research so far, Bohenko said the city borrowed about $4.2 million to pay for Coakley-related costs when the group was formed, and the cost of the principal and interest will be $5.8 million when it’s paid off shortly.
In addition, the city has paid about $1.2 million for other Coakley costs from 2000 to 2018, Bohenko said. That brings the total spending he’s been able to identify so far to more than $7 million.
Sullivan said other city staff are trying to locate all the paper records connected to spending by the CLG.
“We are right now up to about 100 … cardboard boxes full of records,” Sullivan said.
That translates to “at least 100,000 records connected with the Coakley landfill,” Sullivan said.
He stressed that the CLG’s executive committee has to approve any and all spending, which is voted on at CLG teleconferences.
“The group doesn’t have a checkbook, it doesn’t have cash,” Sullivan said.
Mike Deyling, a vice president at CES Inc., the CLG’s main consultants on the project, stressed that despite the concerns raised by people who live around the landfill, the remediation required by the Environmental Protection Agency is working.
Tests on monitoring wells at the landfill have found PFASs and 1,4-dioxane, both suspected carcinogens, at levels above the EPA’s health advisory levels.
Many people living near the landfill fear chemicals leaching from Coakley will contaminate their wells, but so far PFCs found in private wells have tested below the EPA’s health advisory level.
“No one is drinking water that has any of these compounds above the health advisory levels,” Deyling said Monday night.
The City Council also voted unanimously to host a meeting at City Hall with all the interested parties, including officials from other towns, regulators and the public.
City Councilor Rick Becksted made the motion to hold the meeting, although it has not yet been scheduled.
City Councilor Chris Dwyer backed the idea, but suggested that Hampton town officials in particular should watch the tape of Monday’s presentation before all the groups get together.
“They clearly are way out on this stuff,” Dwyer said.
She also pointed to a recent letter sent to the City Council by Hampton selectmen.
“Given this letter and the tone of the letter and the clear misstatements that have been accusatory of all of us,” is why they should watch the presentation, Dwyer said.
Mayor Jack Blalock said he looks forward to having an “honest, open discussion” at the meeting.
He hopes to create “a real level of trust that all the entities involved want the same thing: a clean environment.”