An artist’s rendering of the New London Place assisted living facility. (Courtesy Continuum Health Services)
The development of a total of nearly 200 housing units has stalled after the discovery that chemical contaminants from a dry cleaning business have spread to the groundwater of one of the two project sites.
Planning for both projects — one for seniors and the other for workers — has been ongoing for more than two years, and the contamination has not only compromised private water supplies on both sites, but also has raised questions about the municipal water system’s capacity and the procedures by which water connections for that system are approved.
In July, results from a well test at the site of a planned 139-unit senior living facility on New London Hospital property adjacent to the site of New London Cleaners, a dry cleaning and coin-operated laundry business, revealed the presence of Tetrachlorethylen, or PCE, contamination.
“We were hoping to break ground this fall,” on the facility, Joe Hogan, who owns Continuum Health Services, said by phone Wednesday.
Hogan’s company is working with the hospital to construct the senior housing, which is called New London Place. It would include 95 condominiums and a 40-unit assisted living facility that would include memory care, Hogan said.
“We’re just now trying to research what our options are,” Hogan said.
Similarly, “water was the last critical milestone for getting shovels in the ground,” on a 60-unit workforce housing project to be located just across County Road from the hospital, Twin Pines Housing Executive Director Andrew Winter said Thursday.
With both New Hampshire and the town of New London facing a critical shortage of affordable housing, the town government was supportive of the Twin Pines project, directing a $600,000 municipal services grant to the development.
“We believe that the viability of our businesses and institutions, our college, our hospital and our school district are all in jeopardy if they can not attract employees who need affordable housing,” New London Selectboard Chairman Bill Helm said by phone Friday.
Unclear origins
Though the dry cleaning contamination was first discovered in 2016, the July test was the first indication that the contaminant had spread outside the New London Cleaners property, which is located at 93 Newport Street.
The 2016 discovery of PCE contamination in the groundwater at the cleaners’ property came “during due diligence activities associated with the potential sale of the property,” New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services (DES) spokesman James Martin wrote in an email Thursday.
Since then, the dry cleaning site has been monitored through air sampling and groundwater testing to “determine the full extent and nature of the contamination,” Martin wrote.
PCE is a solvent commonly used in dry cleaning and metal degreasing, according the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which classifies it as a likely carcinogen. The health effects of PCE exposure, either through inhalation of vapor in drinking water are “not great,” New London health officer Nick Baer said by phone on Wednesday, and can include “a variety of cancers and non-Hodgkins lymphoma.”
PCEs had been used at New London Cleaners since at least 2008, according to delivery receipts available through DES. It is not clear from the available information how it was stored, or when and how it may have leaked or spilled.
Jeffery Owen, owner of New London Cleaners, did not return requests for comment by deadline.
“We don’t precisely know how the contaminant got out” into the ground, Baer said. “Back in the ‘60s and ‘70s people may have poured it out the back of the building,” he added. At some point in the past there was also a fire in the building, which caused it to collapse, Baer said, which may have compromised the integrity of stored material.
Capacity issues
Following the discovery of the contamination at the New London Place site, Twin Pines, a White River Junction-based nonprofit housing developer, is now in a legal dispute with the over the precinct’s denial of its request for access to the municipal water system for the project.
Twin Pines began working with the New London Planning Board in late 2022 on the project, called Long Meadow Commons, which would create a mix of one- and two-bedroom apartments on an 8-acre site across County Road from the hospital.
In 2023, Twin Pines applied for a permit to connect to the Springfield-New London Water Precinct system, but was denied due to a lack of capacity on the system.
The precinct system has a maximum capacity of 500,000 gallons a day, Rob Thorp, water precinct superintendent, said by phone Tuesday.
“They do reach that capacity sometimes in the summer,” he said.
The water precinct serves roughly 1,200 households, Thorp said. Created in 1925, it is a “village district” with a three-person board of governors. The system is funded by user fees and a special property tax for property owners who live in the district’s service area. The system’s water source is a well field on Colby Point, a small peninsula that juts into Little Lake Sunapee.
After the precinct’s initial denial, Twin Pines spent roughly $200,000 to drill test wells to determine if the on-site water supply could accommodate the project.
One well delivered a sufficient supply, but before the nonprofit could begin testing the water, the contamination discovery at the New London Place well site prompted DES to deny Twin Pines permission to test its well, Winter, the organization’s director, said Thursday.
Twin Pines then re-submitted its application to the water precinct for a municipal connection. At an Aug. 12 hearing, the permit was again denied.
Thorp said that the precinct must follow the guidelines provided by DES.
“They make the rules, and we have to play by them,” he added.
The water precinct has a growth rate of 1.5 houses each year, Thorp said, and the system only has the capacity for “what we have and normal growth.”
Since July, the precinct has approved two permits, one for a single-family home and one for a five-unit multifamily building.
Appeal pending
On Wednesday, Twin Pines filed an appeal with the New Hampshire Housing Appeals Board, which has the authority to review land use decisions made by municipalities. The appeal alleges that the precinct exhibited “an arbitrary, unlawful, and unreasonable predisposition to approve certain projects and disapprove others.”
The appeal also alleges that a comment by Ken Jacques, chairman of the water precinct’s board of commissioners, indicates that he did not impartially hear evidence in favor of the Long Meadow Commons project.
“I understand the need for affordable housing in New London,” Jacques said just before the Aug. 12 permit hearing began. “I think to be fair, New London has never been a place for average workers to live. It’s just not that type of community economically.”
Jacques is the president of Twin Lake Village summer resort, whose hotel and cottages are on the precinct water system. He did not reply to requests for comment by deadline.
Most of the funding for the Long Meadow Commons project is from state and local sources, including Invest New Hampshire and the grant sponsored by the Town of New London. The funding is site-specific, meaning that it would not be transferable to a different property.
If Twin Pines is not able to build on the County Road property, “it’s likely that we would have to return those funding commitments and start the process over,” Winter said.
“This is a highly unusual situation,” Winter said.
Because it was created by the Legislature to expedite decisions about land use, the Housing Appeal Board is required by statute to hold a hearing within 90 days of receiving an appeal. Within 60 days of the hearing, it must issue a decision.
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