A Nantucket Company Wanted To Ship Yard Waste To The Mainland. The Island's PFAS Reputation Thwarted Its Plan

Is Nantucket’s grass too toxic to truck off-island? Some residents of Newbury, New Hampshire, think so. It’s a striking example of how the island’s reputation for contaminated dirt and water has spread to the mainland, hampering at least one local company’s business efforts.

Last fall, with space running out at its composting facility on-island, Toscana looked to ship leaf and yard waste to a gravel pit property it owns in Newbury, NH. The large Nantucket construction company was already planning to use trucks to transport gravel back to the island, so sending yard waste the other way would prevent an empty trip and solve its space issues.

But Toscana needed local permission to ship the waste, and Newbury residents turned up in droves at a local Planning Board meeting to oppose the operation. Granite Under My Feet, a local blog run by journalist Ray Carbonne, reported that around 100 people attended the meeting.

According to Carbonne, one of the concerns residents raised was the presence of so-called forever chemicals, known as PFAS, in Nantucket’s water and soil, an issue that has plagued the island in recent years. PFAS are linked to cancer and other human health impacts, and have been detected at high levels in many private wells around the island, as well as one of the town’s primary municipal wells, which remains shut down.

In a widely circulated message posted ahead of the meeting, Newbury resident Jeff Estella called Nantucket a “hotbed for PFAS” and wrote that “we need to ask tough questions about what is in the proposed ‘natural debris’ arriving in Newbury and how we can get comfort that nothing will leach into the aquifer, thus impacting local wells.”

Numerous comments echoed his concerns, and the Planning Board ultimately told Toscana they would need to go before the local Zoning Board of Adjustment.

“People had a snap. They thought we were making nuclear waste up there,” Toscana owner Carl Jelleme told the Current.

Jelleme claims that Toscana had an expert test their pile for PFAS, and none was detected.

Jelleme also contested some details of the Granite Under My Feet report, saying that Toscana never planned to ship the compost back to Nantucket. He says it sells better on the mainland, and garden centers “can’t get enough of it.”

Facing strong opposition from Newbury, Toscana abandoned the plan to ship yard waste north and turned to the Nantucket landfill, a choice that would prevent Toscana from selling the compost but could still allow them to accept waste from local contractors.

“We didn't want to push it any further,” Jelleme said. “We didn't think we were going to be successful getting it approved.”

That move sparked backlash of its own, prompting the town of Nantucket to institute an emergency regulation capping yard waste delivered by private contractors at 100 tons per month. Toscana and the town have clashed over the regulation, which the town says is necessary to avoid major costs to the town and prevent the landfill from being overwhelmed. Toscana contends the regulation won’t actually reduce the amount of waste the landfill receives and will only make things more difficult for contractors.