Toxins in the blooms are harmful to people and animals. (N.H. Department of Environmental Services, des.nh.gov.)
The Legislature on Thursday overrode the governor’s veto of a bill that puts limits on fertilizers with the aim of reducing cyanobacteria blooms.
The measure, House Bill 1293, further restricts the use of certain phosphorus-containing fertilizers and prohibits applying fertilizer within 25 feet of a storm drain or elsewhere where it can enter a storm drain. It goes into effect at the start of next year.
Phosphorus feeds cyanobacteria, the often-toxic growths that crop up around the state’s water bodies and thrive in warm, nutrient-rich conditions. There were 66 cyanobacteria warnings issued this year as of Oct. 8, said David Neils, an administrator with the Department of Environmental Services Watershed Management Bureau, in an email.
Gov. Chris Sununu argued the measure, though having good intentions, “would put countless well-meaning families unintentionally in violation of the law when maintaining privately owned lawns.” Besides “highly unreasonable” restrictions, he said, “the Department of Agriculture reports that enforcement of this law would be entirely reliant on neighbors telling on neighbors rather than direct action by the agency.”
Rep. Lorie Ball, a Salem Republican, said the bill was all about education, not neighbors turning on each other. She was spurred to sponsor the legislation after seeing the cyanobacteria problem up close living on Arlington Pond.
“The majority of the people would follow the law if they knew the impact” of the fertilizers, she said in an interview Wednesday.
Meanwhile, one of the bill’s sponsors, Rep. Mike Bordes, a Laconia Republican, urged his colleagues to keep the governor’s veto in place, saying “this is a toothless bill that will not be enforced.”
“This bill would sail through in a state like Massachusetts,” he said in the House. “We are not Massachusetts. We are the Live Free or Die state.”
Sununu has expressed frustration with the messaging from the DES on the issue and claimed recently that cyanobacteria are not toxic, which is not accurate.
“That’s where I think he is misinformed, and it’s unfortunate,” Ball said.
The bill cleared the two-thirds majorities in each chamber needed to pass over the governor’s objections, with the House voting 232-99 and the Senate 22-1.