By Scott Merrill and Kylie Valluzzi, Granite State News Collaborative

Last June, neighbors in Nashua celebrated an environmental victory: City officials had rejected a proposal to build a hot-mix asphalt plant in the city’s North End, a neighborhood that historically had been a mix of industrial and residential.

City zoning laws would allow the plant to be built in that neighborhood, but the Nashua Planning Board found that the “transitioning nature of the neighborhood” toward residential justified rejection of the asphalt plant.

Critics argued that the asphalt plant proposed by Newport Construction Corp. would have been in the wrong place, a residential area that includes low-income communities and communities of color, as well as schools, businesses and churches. The case has ignited a fierce debate about environmental justice and the true cost of progress. 

Today, however, the neighborhood’s victory remains in doubt, as the fight continues on several fronts.

First, Newport Construction has filed suit challenging the planning board’s decision, contending that the city’s own rules should have allowed construction of the asphalt plant. 

Second, the N.H. Department of Environmental Services’ Air Resources Division is reviewing the company’s air permit application to see if the asphalt plant would comply with state and federal air pollution standards. 

As these fights continue nearly one year later, the people who live in the area argue they should have more of a say in what’s acceptable in their neighborhood, and object strongly to the proposed asphalt plant.

“Who wants to live or work in a place where the daily experience is overshadowed by the coming and going of dump trucks and tractor-trailers and is set to the soundtrack of crushing rock and diesel motors? The City of Nashua in 2022 is not the same as the city of 1952,” Rob Pinsonneault, an environmental science teacher at Bishop Guertin High School for 14 years, wrote in an opinion column published in the New Hampshire Union Leader in December 2022.  “It is the wrong industry in the wrong place at the wrong time.” 

“People who live in that neighborhood deserve better.”

New Hampshire is the only New England state without an environmental justice law or policy protecting socially vulnerable people from the burdens of development and ensuring environmental benefits are equitably distributed.

Even so, a growing stream of organizations — hospitals, health care workers, legal experts, community rights organizations, and other individuals from around the state — are working to uphold environmental justice principles and to find solutions for difficult problems involving sustainability and quality of life.

That’s what happened in Nashua last year, when the proposed asphalt plant was rejected.

A ‘classic case’

“This is a classic case of environmental justice,” said Tom Irwin, vice president of the Conservation Law Foundation of New Hampshire. His organization joined the fight opposing the asphalt plant, as did 350 NH Action, a state group advocating for climate justice, plus members of Nashua’s faith community. 

Also in the fight is environmental attorney Amy Manzelli, whose clients include Riverfront Landing LLC, an apartment complex that is fighting for the right to intervene in Newport Construction’s appeal of the planning board ruling. It was denied the right to intervene by the N.H. Superior Court in March, and has appealed that ruling to the N.H. Supreme Court.

Manzelli says it would be a “tremendous deprivation of justice” if the Conservation Law Foundation and Riverfront are not allowed to intervene. 

“The city will do justice to the city's interests,” she says. “But the only one who can do the best justice by Riverfront is Riverfront, the one who has millions and millions of dollars at stake.”

A Supreme Court hearing on the appeal is expected by this summer.

Last June, the Nashua Planning Board rejected the Newport Construction application for a permit, citing concerns about balancing the health burdens and the benefits of construction for those in the community and finding that the plant’s permit would violate the city’s site plan ordinance, which is tied to its master plan.

“We’re just making the people who are most marginalized sick,” said Tonia Knisley, a Nashua resident who’s been speaking against the plant since she heard of it in 2022. “And it doesn’t matter how much you disguise a smell of a chemical; you’re still inhaling the chemical. It’s still affecting your body.” 

Knisley lives on Burke Street, a mile from the proposed plant site. Her grandchildren attend Dr. Norman W. Crisp Elementary School, seven-tenths of a mile from the site.

The neighborhood is not unfamiliar with “waste-site situations,” she said. Behind the elementary school sat a dump in the 1960s, which has long since been filled and is now home to the school’s track. But she suspects toxins from the dump caused health problems.

"My opinion is that I don't want it. It's in the middle of a residential neighborhood and, historically, that has never been a good combination,” she said. 

“In my opinion, it should not be built in that area,” said Angela Mercado, director of Nashua’s Community Engagement Training Center. “We should think and add parks or more housing. That area is very close to the main streets; it has many neighborhoods around. 

“Nashua is growing and has many newcomers, the rents are so off the market, and we need affordable rent and recreational parks for our community, instead of the asphalt plant that would create traffic,” Mercado said. 

‘Nobody knew what was happening’

Efforts to stop Newport Construction’s proposed asphalt plant at 145 Temple St. began in the spring of 2022, when state Rep. Alicia Gregg, D-Nashua, began knocking on people’s doors in her ward to explain potential problems with the plant, including noise and air pollution.

“This is a community that is already marginalized, and I knocked on every door and nobody knew what was happening,” Gregg said. “One woman who came to the door with an oxygen tank became emotional when we spoke about the issue of air pollutants, and I encouraged her to do something. I reminded all the people I met that they are the real experts in their neighborhood.”

Manzelli argued to the Nashua Planning Board last year that the plant would not be consistent with Nashua’s master plan, “Imagine Nashua.” 

Nashua’s planning and zoning ordinances state that site plans must be “consistent with the goals, objectives and strategies adopted as part of the city’s master plan,” Manzelli said. She argued to the planning board that residents of the Temple Street neighborhood were particularly vulnerable because they trail state averages on various socioeconomic measures.

People with less than a high school education in the Temple Street neighborhood are 2.6 times higher than the New Hampshire average, the unemployment rate is 2.25 times higher than the New Hampshire average, people of low income are 2.6 times higher than the New Hampshire average, and people with limited English proficiency are five times the New Hampshire average.

“The developer is never going to say they didn’t care about ‘those people,’ but the fact that they disregarded this residential community and described it as the perfect site for an industrial hot-mix asphalt plant demonstrates they didn’t care for these people,” she said. “Nashua as a whole is one of the most diverse communities in the state.”

Manzelli’s client and the Nashua city government had economic studies performed that showed the plant would have driven down nearby property values by millions of dollars. 

“A lot of these homes around the plant are not owner-occupied; they’re renter-occupied,” she said. Landlords taking an economic hit could need to increase rent, or sell. “These folks would be very, very, disproportionately affected by any decreases in value,” she said.

Environmental issues she raised included the plant’s impact on water resources, given how much of the neighborhood was covered by impervious materials — concrete, asphalt and buildings — paired with the substances proposed to be stored, transported, used, and manufactured. 

“People were concerned about all of the possible impacts from the plant,” Manzelli said, such as pollution, traffic, and a decrease in property values.

Defining environmental justice

Environmental justice work takes place in an interdisciplinary field of community advocates, lawyers, public health experts, business leaders, and others committed to principles of justice. The issues they raise range from heat-related illnesses, dangerous roadways, food insecurity, unsafe housing, air, noise, water pollution, and many more. 

The term environmental justice emerged in the United States in the 1980s and has two distinct uses. The more common use refers to a social movement by which fairness is addressed regarding environmental burdens and benefits.

The other use refers to an interdisciplinary body of social science literature that includes theories of the environment and justice, environmental laws and their implementations, environmental policy and planning, and governance for development and sustainability.

Over the last 10 years, towns and cities across New Hampshire have drafted statements focusing on sustainability, equity and quality of life. Rights-based ordinances have emerged that express a community’s desire to protect health and safety of people and ecosystems. 

Nashua’s master plan includes a statement that all people in the city “should have access to resources that enable a healthy, safe and vibrant life” that is aligned with the city’s site planning ordinance, which steers land use policy. 

Creating a community network

Soon after Arnold Mikolo learned about the asphalt plant proposal, he went to work identifying people in the Temple Street area who would be affected by it. Mikolo, a Conservation Law Foundation environmental justice community advocate, participated in forming an advisory group that included others willing to help organize the community. 

Citizens Against the Asphalt Plant, started by community activist Jo Anne St. John with the help of Rep. Gregg, Mikolo, Pinsonneault and others, met at St. John’s house in the lead-up to the planning board meetings that began in 2022. 

Pinsonneault completed a Ph.D. earlier in his teaching career and now is completing a master’s degree in environmental law and policy at the University of Vermont Law School. St. John introduced Pinsonneault to the Conservation Law Foundation and the asphalt plant issue last year. 

St. John “heard about my background and said, ‘Boy, do I have an issue for you,’” Pinsonneault recalls, since the asphalt plant would be only a couple of blocks from his home on the Merrimack River. 

St. John, who has been active in Nashua politics since she and her husband moved to the city from Massachusetts in the 1970s, became involved with stopping the asphalt plant after reading an article about it. She connected with Irwin at the Conservation Law Foundation, who suggested she meet Mikolo. From there, she reached out to Pinsonneault and Gregg.

Pinsonneault and his wife moved to Riverfront Landing on Bancroft Street in part, he says, to support the neighborhood rejuvenation.

In his December 2022 opinion column, Pinsonnealt took issue with Newport Construction’s argument that nuisances like noise, traffic and pollution would be accounted for and counterbalanced by increases in jobs and other benefits to the local economy. He argued the plant’s economic advantages would be outweighed by health burdens placed on residents, and the effects on businesses and property values. 

St. John says she was very disappointed by a meeting in late September, held by the N.H. Department of Environmental Services to address rules for future public hearings regarding Newport Construction’s appeal. 

“They’re focusing on air quality issues and people will only be able to speak about this aspect,” she said, and not about emissions from trucks or other issues. “These are people who aren’t going to understand a lot of the technical language about air pollutants. They’re not going to be heard. It seemed like an insult to the public.”  

Gregg, a domestic violence survivor, says she understands the dangers of voices not being heard. 

“We need to look at things more broadly and from our own communities’ perspective,” she says. She didn’t go door to door in 2022 to win votes, she said; rather, “I wanted to hear people’s voices. And throughout this process we wanted to show respect to the planning board, and we did.”

Building a belief in the system

Manzelli says that, for her, the asphalt plant issue is primarily about justice in general and restoring people's faith in the system. 

“In my career, the importance of these cases isn’t so much on environmental justice, but on justice,” Manzelli says. “In cases like this, I hear people say things like, ‘I didn’t know this was possible.’ Cases like the one in Nashua make people want to participate in government more.”

Manzelli says the Nashua case allows people to see that “not every developer’s application is going to be rubber-stamp approved.”

“Ultimately, it’s about building that kind of belief or that kind of faith in the system, and this is what's going to help people facing environmental burdens.”

These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.