Who will take responsibility for Berlin’s toxin-seeping Dummer Yard?

According to Berlin Mayor Robert Cone, the fortune of the struggling former mill town once known as “Paper City” is on the upswing. 

“We’re slowly starting to stack some small wins,” he said in a phone interview on Tuesday.

Recently, that has meant catching up on repairs and basic road maintenance — “We haven’t really had the luxury of doing that stuff in the past,” Cone said — as well as securing federal funds to clean up a number of city-owned buildings and a massive, grant-funded effort to rebuild downtown infrastructure and streetscapes, a project Cone said the city is scheduled to break ground on next year.

Yet that forward progress is not spread equally throughout the city. And one brownfield site, an unlined and derelict landfill known as Dummer Yard, is facing a particularly uncertain future after plans to build another landfill on the same parcel stalled this summer. 

The developers behind the proposal suggested they could pay for the costly fixes required at the existing dump by establishing a new enterprise beside it: a second landfill, for contaminated soil.

The plan stirred opposition among some of the site’s neighbors and brought focus to tension between the state and city regarding responsibility for the site, which leaks leachate, or “trash juice,” laden with toxic chemicals like PFAS. With the developers now gone, some residents expressed relief — but the city still must contend with the landfill and the hazards it contains, and state and local officials have so far failed to identify clear next steps.

“All of us here in town don’t understand their process,” said Joe Miller, a resident of East Berlin and member of a local group, ACT Berlin, that opposed the landfill proposal. Miller said the group was frustrated by what they saw as official inaction on the site and a lack of transparency. “…I think there are a lot of alternatives, and I think that it should be a public process, you know, initiated by our elected officials, who are meant to lead us,” he said. 

A mill’s legacy

Cone’s pride in what he describes as Berlin’s positive momentum is magnified against the backdrop of the city’s trying recent history. Since local paper, pulp, and sawmills began to slump in the 1980s and 1990s — its last paper mill, Fraser Paper, closed in 2006 — Berlin has struggled with high rates of unemployment, poverty, out-migration, and residual environmental contamination. At least 40 environmentally hazardous brownfield sites are scattered throughout the city, according to a recent grant application from city officials. 

One of those brownfields is the Dummer Yard landfill, which occupies about 100 acres of an approximately 400-acre parcel owned by Pulp of America, LLC. In 10 pits, the landfill stores waste from a former nearby paper mill, according to the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services. That material includes sludge from the plant’s wastewater treatment plant, bark, lime, ash, and “general mill waste.”

Tests of leachate, soil, groundwater, and surface water from the site conducted by consultant Sanborn, Head & Associates on behalf of the developer and by the Department of Environmental Services revealed the presence of chemicals and metals including PFAS, arsenic, manganese, copper, and more in concentrations that have exceeded safety standards. 

Meanwhile, structural and infrastructure issues at the landfill also contribute to concerns about its environmental impact. Those issues, according to the department and developer, include problems with the landfill’s cap and with the leachate collection system, which pools the trash juice emanating from the landfill to prevent it from reaching groundwater. 

Yet the parent company of the site owner is bankrupt, and a bond meant to cover ongoing management ran out in 2018, according to reporting by the Berlin Sun. 

Today, the city of Berlin continues to treat the leachate from the privately held landfill despite the lack of long-gone outside funding. As much as 4 million gallons of the liquid, laden with contaminants, is transported to the city’s wastewater treatment facility annually for processing. This costs the city, though both Cone and Wastewater Treatment Plant Superintendent Jon Goodreau declined to estimate the total scope of the resulting financial burden. 

Nor is 4 million gallons the total amount of leachate and runoff generated by the landfill. With the site’s owner inactive, concern about the integrity of the leachate collection system has raised local concern about leaks. And rainstorms are known to lead to overflow events, Cone said, that see leachate running off the property and ultimately into the Androscoggin River, which runs through Berlin within about 1,000 feet of Dummer Yard. 

“Of course I’m concerned about how the site exists currently,” Cone said. “It has a fence around it, but wildlife goes in there, they drink the groundwater,” he said, noting that he worries contaminants are making their way to North Country residents through the region’s rich tradition of hunting and fishing. 

Meanwhile, the North Country’s evolving weather is not helping. Climate change is driving shifts in rainfall patterns, creating heavier, more intense rain events across much of New England.

“The way rain events have been of late, they’ve been, you know, longer, more severe, heavier rainfalls,” Cone said.

Developers offer clean up but with a catch: a new landfill

Miller and his wife, Valerie Moore, moved to Berlin after Miller’s military service ended, purchasing a home on the city’s east side in 2023. 

The east side can carry a difficult reputation, Miller said. But the two loved their neighborhood from their first days there, and have grown more involved locally in the years since, especially through organizing with ACT Berlin.

At a community gathering in the early spring of 2025, Cone and Miller said, LFOD Northwoods — a joint venture between Massachusetts-based excavating firm W. L. French and Newington-based North & South Construction Services — presented plans for two projects they said were intended to take place concurrently. One was the remediation of the Dummer Yard landfill; another was a new soil landfill on the same parcel. 

The soil landfill would accept a range of contaminated soils, including incinerator ash, asbestos soil and building material, street sweepings, catch basin waste, sewer grit, and other unidentified material, according to materials presented by LFOD Northwoods to the Berlin City Council in July 2025. 

The facility would have a capacity of 5 million tons of soil, and accept waste for five to 10 years, the developer said. And a portion of revenue, they added, would cover the site remediation work at Dummer Yard, back taxes on the property — which totalled about $150,000 as of July 2025, according to the presentation — and a tipping fee paid annually to Berlin, which the developer estimated at about $1 million each year.

LFOD Northwoods estimated the hard costs of the fixes needed at the landfill would be about $14 million, said Jake McManus, LFOD Northwoods project manager for the Dummer Yard site.

“We believe this was a great opportunity for not only the community of Berlin but also for the state of New Hampshire,” he said.

Yet Moore and Miller, whose home is blocks away from the site, weren’t convinced. They came together with other locals who had concerns about the proposal. Aided in organizing by the environmental group Slingshot, the residents formed the group ACT Berlin, convened at a neighbor’s house, and began to discuss their concerns.

The group took issue with LFOD Northwoods’ presenting the two sides of the project as necessarily connected, Miller said. One reason for this was the developer’s plan to conduct the remediation portion of the project through New Hampshire’s Brownfields Covenant Program, which would shield them from liability for preexisting contamination.

A brownfield cleanup plan presented by the developer as part and parcel to a new landfill goes against the intent of that program, Miller said. Thus, it was “a bit galling,” he added, for the state to grant the remediation work a brownfields covenant and associated liability protections.

Miller began to research the project more deeply, sending questions and right-to-know requests to the department, yielding dozens of emails. 

More from this section

+2

New Hampshire has 2 billionaires, see who they are

In one email response, department staff said that the application process required the state to consider the two projects separately. The existence of the landfill plans, therefore, did not factor in during consideration of the brownfields covenant application.

ACT Berlin also had concerns that eagerness to escape the cost of treating the Dummer Yard leachate softened officials’ opinions toward the new landfill project, Miller said. 

An agreement between Berlin and the state, signed in 2007, allows the town to stop handling the leachate from Dummer Yard if certain conditions are met, such as if volume crosses a certain threshold, or if treating the material results in costs to the town in excess of $1,000 per year. 

Some in Berlin say those conditions have been met. Though Goodreau, of the wastewater treatment plant, declined to provide an estimate of how much the treatment was costing Berlin, he confirmed it was in excess of $1,000 annually. Miller and Cone both said they believed the agreement could put responsibility back on to the state for managing the leachate from the Dummer Yard site.

Yet despite these concerns, the public did not have a chance to weigh in on the proposal during the application process, Miller said. The New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services waived an early step in the application, called an alternatives analysis, that Miller said would have required LFOD Northwoods to publicly compare alternative options for remediating the site.

It is the department’s discretion to make such a decision, said Michael Wimsatt, waste management division director with the department, in an email to New Hampshire Bulletin. 

Before learning that the project had stalled, Miller expected that required public comment opportunities were coming later in the application process, he said, and was awaiting a chance to weigh in. But he saw the lack of public process regarding the plans up to that point as unfair to the community that would bear the impact on roads from increased truck traffic, the aesthetic impact of the dump, and environmental impacts, from the trucking of additional contaminants into their city to possible groundwater impacts from plans to blast bedrock to make room for the soil. 

“We would have another massive, man-made scar on the natural skyline,” Miller said. 

Residents, including the members of ACT Berlin, expressed these and other reservations to Cone, who said he understood their concerns. Yet for the mayor, the pros still seemed to outweigh the cons.

“What I liked about it the most was it did have a solution for remediation for the Dummer Yard,” he said. 

So when LFOD Northwoods decided to end their application process, Cone said he was concerned.

By early summer 2026, the developer had invested about $2 million in preparing their application, by McManus’ estimate. But after the passage of House Bill 707 — signed into law by Gov. Kelly Ayotte in early July — the company decided the project was no longer tenable, McManus said.

HB 707 establishes a new landfill siting process, involving a new committee and expanding the scope of criteria they may consider when deciding whether to grant approval for a new or expanded landfill. The bill also creates a moratorium of approximately one year on such projects.

To comply with the moratorium, the company would need an extension from the property owner, McManus said, adding he also had concerns the new process would be more costly.

That outcome is despite lobbying attempts from the developers involved in the Dummer Yard project to shape the final form of HB 707. 

“We were involved in some of the discussions,” McManus said, including attempts to exempt the Dummer Yard project from some of the bill’s requirements. “… Unfortunately, that didn’t come to fruition,” he said.

Yet for Miller, this outcome was an early example of HB 707, fresh from the Legislature, accomplishing what the activists who had pushed for the law hoped it would.

“I was really happy. … It injects more transparency and more accountability into the process, and I think we all benefit from that,” he said.

‘Back to the drawing board’

With the new landfill apparently stalled, ACT Berlin is no longer treating the Dummer Yard situation as a crisis. But all the issues that made the remediation side of the project so needed remain, Miller said. 

“Unfortunately, the reality of the situation is just the status quo, right? It is what it is, and it has been for many years now,” he said. 

LFOD Northwoods believes the property owner will put the parcel back on the market, according to McManus. And in the meantime, “questions regarding responsibility for remediation and any funding remain open,” Wimsatt said in an email.

ACT Berlin has floated working with a land trust to buy the property, leasing it to a solar company, or their preferred route: pursuing federal and private grants to pay for the remediation work, Miller said. 

The property abuts natural areas, and Miller said he would love to see residents enjoying it once more, rather than fearing it.

“We can do this. We can fight for, and get, money locally,” Miller said.

Cone agreed that remediation of the site was a crucial next step in Berlin’s comeback. 

“Knowing what’s in the Dummer Yard … That just eats at the pit of my stomach,” he said. 

But what form might progress take?

“Right now,” he said, “I think we’re kind of sent back to the drawing board.”