Special Board of Aldermen 03-15-2021 Page 13
The difference here is that you encapsulate asbestos and the asbestos starts to leak and it is granule stuff,
you can go dig down and re-capsulate it. This stuff is heavy metal, real bad stuff that if this starts to leak
out is going to really and has wreaked havoc. So | guess to reiterate my point is I’d like to see more of a
plan.
But also in regards to the private company being the one to monitor that, no way. Under no circumstances
would | agree to that. | don’t mind if they, in fact, | do agree that they should probably have to pay for the
monitoring but the City of Nashua should do that. Either the City of Nashua or the State of New Hampshire
should do that because we want to make sure that it is being done with the public interest in mind. And it is
no bad reputation on the company but we all know that corporations have their interests and the
Government has its interests. And our interest is to protect the environment and to protect the people that
are going to be living there and in that neighborhood. And under no circumstances should a non-
government agency be in charge of monitoring. So that to me is ... if that’s the only way forward then to me
that’s a non-starter. So | just wanted that on the record as well.
President Wilshire
Alderman Lopez?
Alderman Lopez
So similar to what Alderman Clemons had said, earlier it was stated that we were going to have to live with
this. We are not going to live with this, the people who are living there are going to have to live with this
and the people who are living on the site do. So | echo what Alderman Clemons is saying and | understand
where he is coming from because of his personal history. And those are the concerns that | am hearing
from the neighbors where we can’t have miscommunication, we can’t cut any corners, we need to make
sure that we aren’t just burying something and then hoping that it never rears its head, because of the
nature of it and because these neighborhoods have been burned before, literally burned. Like there has
been a fire which has deposited contaminants all over the site. So going back to what Alderman O’Brien
was probably referencing, even the surface level is going to have to be looked at and confirmed to be safe
if we start disturbing it and moving it around.
So this is a project where we need to be very, very conscious of public attention and public engagement
because there’s going to be a lot of questions and there is going to be a lot of concerns. And it’s not local,
neighborhood people who are coming out because they want to be involved. It is because they are
concerned about their homes and their family’s safety and how this is going to affect them. So | think it’s
very important that we improve our transparency and our communication, particularly. This project began
under somewhat of an inauspicious foot because there was miscommunication on the parts of the City as
to who the developers were, who even knew who the developers were, whether there were meetings or
whether there were parking lot encounters or whatever.
| think moving forward, especially if the Aldermen are going to have to be put in the situation of making
decisions about this, and now is our time. We need to have very clear communication on what is being
negotiated and what those terms are. Because | think in the past, it hasn’t been clear. | was actually under
the impression that several times it was stated that the City wouldn’t be using the TIF for clean-up costs at
all, we would be using it for infrastructure and that type of thing. And that’s important for the Aldermen to
consider because if we TIF the development for the tannery’s clean up and all that kind of stuff, it extends
the time in which we are not collecting any tax revenue. And we want to be conscious of that particularly if
we do start other development projects that are nearby that would give us tax revenue in order to offset the
expenses and really see that benefit.
All that being said, and again, in communication with the residents in the area, they really do want to see
this cleaned up. There’s going to be no development or tax revenue to be had if we don’t figure out a
solution out of 36 year old dilemma. So it is important for us to make this work. And that’s why | think
