Editor’s Notebook: A New Hampshire lesson about subsidies for corporate polluters
Dana Wormald
December 17, 2024 5:09 pm
"How much should Saint-Gobain 'remediate the PFAS pollution in soil and groundwater'? There should be only one legitimate answer: Fully."
Of all the hidden subsidies for big business – also known as corporate welfare – the failed enforcement or dismantling of environmental regulations are the most pernicious.
“Not bearing the full cost of one’s action,” economist Joseph E. Stiglitz writes in “The Price of Inequality,” “is an implicit subsidy, so all those industries that impose, for instance, environmental costs on others are, in effect, being subsidized.”
In New Hampshire, the modern poster child for this troubling reality is Saint-Gobain, the French multinational corporation that is in the process of dismantling its poison-spewing Merrimack facility, as NHPR reported last week. The release of PFAS, the carcinogenic “forever chemicals,” into drinking water in Merrimack and surrounding communities by Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics has endangered the health of thousands of residents and cost communities many millions of dollars.
Logic dictates that the cost of doing business for Saint-Gobain should include the backpacker’s guiding principle of “leave no trace,” yet the company has seemed more interested in corporate-splaining its perception of responsibility than actually remediating the damage it has inflicted on the people of the state.
And as it makes for the exit, Saint-Gobain is leaving a trail of “buts.”
“But it seems the company draws a line at complying with recent requests from the state to sample dozens of wells within that remediation region, known as the consent decree area, which includes parts of Bedford, Hudson, Litchfield, Londonderry, and Merrimack,” reported the Bulletin’s Claire Sullivan in July. “Hundreds of properties in those areas tested above state standards for a type of PFAS chemical called perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, contamination linked to air emissions from the facility.”
And, from NHPR’s Mara Hoplamazian last week: “But how much Saint-Gobain must remediate the PFAS pollution in soil and groundwater is an ongoing debate between company officials and New Hampshire’s Department of Environmental Services.”
How much should Saint-Gobain “remediate the PFAS pollution in soil and groundwater”? There should be only one legitimate answer: Fully. Any other response is an endorsement of the idea that a multibillion-dollar global corporation that poisoned the local environment is worthy of a public bailout – including payments from the victims themselves.
But that illegitimate answer is the one we seem to be largely stuck with. In Merrimack alone, residents have spent millions to filter out the “forever chemicals” poisoning their water. According to Forbes, Compagnie de Saint-Gobain SA (the parent company, with about 159,000 employees) has reported profits of $2.9 billion this year on revenue of $51.8 billion, yet the people of Merrimack (with about 29,000 residents) were left with no choice but to approve a $14.5 million bond in 2019 to filter PFAS out of four public wells. As a result, the town’s water rates nearly doubled.
Lawmakers, in a too-rare show of bipartisanship, moved last legislative session to hold polluting companies more accountable for the damage they cause, passing House Bill 1415 to provide for “perfluoroalkyls (PFAS) facility liability for contaminations of groundwater quality standards according to federal regulations.“
The bill was an example of how the government can and should work to place limits on what corporations are allowed to extract from and inflict upon the communities where they operate. Gov. Chris Sununu, however, vetoed the bill. “It is extremely important to hold appropriate parties accountable for their actions,” Sununu said in his veto message, followed by yet another “but”: “But this legislation misses the mark.”
How did it miss the mark? The governor said the PFAS “concentrations triggering regulatory action” would conflict with a bill he did sign, HB 1649, and that it would be “extremely difficult to administer both and enforce them appropriately.” So he signed 1649, which did some good in terms of product bans, but vetoed the one that took a stricter approach to reducing public subsidies for corporate polluters.
It was an unpopular decision. In fact, the near-evenly divided New Hampshire House voted 289-38 to override his veto, likely not buying his argument that small-town fire stations rather than corporations like Saint-Gobain would be the targets of such a bill. In the end, though, the Senate sustained the veto, killing the measure.
Rep. Nancy Murphy, a Merrimack Democrat who sponsored HB 1415, was clear-eyed about Sununu’s veto when she spoke to the Bulletin in August: “It’s unfortunate when paid lobbyists for polluters are heard, their voices are heard above that of actual constituents and the people that the government is supposed to be working for.”
Unfortunate, indeed. Somehow, and against all reason, the debate over whether polluters should be held liable for the harm they cause has become politicized in America. No matter how many environmental disasters we experience – from the instant harm of oil spills to the slower-moving tragedies like lead and PFAS contamination – there is a continuous American war on protective regulations. So powerful are corporations – mainly through government lobbying and the free-flowing campaign contributions encouraged by our broken system – that public servants are more likely to function as instruments of corporate greed than protectors of public health, safety, and overall well-being.
Consider this post from President-elect Donald Trump on Truth Social last week: “Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals. GET READY TO ROCK!!!”
Wow, three exclamation points. I’ve never seen somebody so fired up to hand out more public money to corporate polluters. And should any freewheeling multinationals decide to come to your town, at the president-elect’s invitation, I’m sure the people of Merrimack would be happy to brief you on what you can expect. Now, and forever.
Comments1
No matter how many environmental disasters we experience –
No matter how many environmental disasters we experience – from the instant harm of oil spills to the slower-moving tragedies like lead and PFAS contamination – there is a continuous American war on protective regulations.