Dr. Adam M. Finkel is a professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, and a former senior executive in the Clinton and GW Bush administrations. He lives in Dalton.

As an environmental scientist living in the North Country, and a lifelong progressive Democrat (I worked for Al Gore in the U.S. Congress and later Robert Reich at the Labor Department), I look forward to the NH Senate someday having a majority of members (of either party) who will vote for precautionary policies that benefit the state’s environment, the health of its residents, and its economy.

And so I’m concerned about the District 15 primary, for one nagging reason. It’s clear that some companies, particularly out-of-state ones, have been working behind the scenes in the Senate to thwart sensible legislation. We voters have always had to deal with the undue influence of campaign contributions on politicians’ loyalties. But one of the three Democratic candidates for this seat — namely, Tara Reardon— is involved with special interests at a much larger scale than direct-contribution limits allow.

For 10 years, Reardon has served Merrimack County for the thankless annual salary of about $9,000, and I applaud her and all the other candidates for Senate (and House) who seek a job that pays essentially nothing. But this means that while serving in these roles, office-holders have to rely on other sources of income; in Reardon’s case, this means a lobbying firm where her husband, son, and father-in-law work for many clients. Jim Bouley even describes himself as “the consummate ‘insider’ in New Hampshire.”

When I was a federal appointee at OSHA and EPA, I interacted with lobbyists all the time, and do so currently in NH; they are an important part of our system. But there are exceptions. First, some companies pride themselves on being able to burrow into places in government where “ordinary” people have no access. More worrisome is the “revolving door” wherein government officials leave the public sector to lobby for companies they used to regulate (or pretended to regulate!) But I’ve rarely seen someone with so much lobbying income try to revolve the other way, from one-sided advocacy into what should be the people’s Senate.

In full disclosure, as a scientist and former federal regulator, I have had long-standing arguments (among some points of agreement) with some of the clients Bouley does “issue advocacy” for.  Several clients who produce or cheerlead for toxic chemicals, in my view, specialize in “manufactured doubt” around the risks of these substances to human health.  I admit to a distaste for lobbyists whose work enables “junk science” to drown out common sense.

You won’t find one very special client of Reardon’s family firm disclosed on its public website, one that has paid her husband and son $60,000 annually in each recent year. Casella Waste Systems, a Vermont company, is the brains behind what in my opinion is the worst “capture” of a state government I’ve seen in my 40 years working in public policy.

Casella has succeeded — so far — in getting the Department of Environmental Services to put forth by far the weakest criterion for siting landfills in the entire world. While nearly all other states, provinces, and foreign countries won’t allow a new landfill at a tract where pollution can flow towards drinking water sources at more than 1 foot per year, DES plans to allow flow rates of up to 15 feet per day. Through a recent 91-A request, I now have notes of a January 2024 meeting where Casella asked DES specifically to weaken this terrible regulation even further, because, I contend, the company’s data on the tract in Coos/Grafton reveals that it can’t pass any more normal test. Who signed in representing Casella for this fateful meeting? Jim Bouley.

And this is far from a North Country problem alone. The Casella landfill would be a giant magnet for out-of-state trash, and half a billion gallons of PFAS-containing leachate will be trucked to — I hope readers know where — Concord and Manchester, for dilution (not treatment) and discharge into the Merrimack River.

After I had finished writing this piece, Ms. Reardon replied to the two emails and the direct message I had sent her nearly a month before. She answered that she believes NH is in “no rush to build a landfill, and if we ever do build another it should not be in that location.” She also wrote that we should “pause” all new landfill siting in order to develop better disposal or other methods. I appreciate those representations. But SD-15 Democrats already have two other excellent choices in the upcoming primary, a lawyer with 6 years’ service in the House (Rebecca McWilliams), and a first-term House member (Angela Brennan). Special interests don’t need special access to our closely-divided Senate.