Witnesses describe New Hampshire Green Snow Pro certification and limited-liability rule at S.29 hearing

Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on April 11 heard testimony on S.29 about New Hampshire’s Green Snow Pro certification program, a voluntary salt-reduction initiative that ties limited liability to contractors’ training, documentation and best practices.

Ted Diers, assistant director of the water division at the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, told the committee the program began after state and EPA sampling around the I-93 expansion found four streams exceeding state chloride water-quality standards. “We did a TMDL, which is a total maximum daily load,” Diers said, describing the exercise used to identify sectoral sources of salt; his office’s analysis showed the Department of Transportation accounted for about 9% of salt use, municipalities about 25% and the remainder largely from private parking lots and driveways.

The nut of the Green Snow Pro model, Diers said, is to pair training and best management practices with a limited-liability provision so contractors who follow the program are not made uniquely vulnerable to lawsuits for using reduced salt. “They felt they could still protect public safety, but the act of intentionally using less salt… left them open to vulnerability to lawsuit,” Diers said. He described the law as modeled on existing ski-area protections but stressed the statute does not eliminate liability for negligence.

Aubrey Velker, the program’s salt-reduction and Green Snow Pro coordinator at the Department of Environmental Services, described how certification works. Applicants must complete approved coursework and pass an exam, then submit application documents and an annual fee to the department. “Once someone completes their training… they then have to send in an application as well as an application fee,” Velker said. Individual certificates carry a $150 annual fee; larger companies use a master certificate holder model (master fee $250 annually) and subordinate certificates (up to $100 total in subordinate fees). Certificates expire June 30 and require continuing education every two years and a full retraining cycle every six years, Velker said.

Velker also described a municipal Green Snow Pro track, adopted in administrative rules in May 2024, that certifies municipalities rather than individual employees. Municipal certification requires a salt-reduction plan updated every five years, equipment-calibration documentation, material storage rules and a $450 annual application fee for any municipality regardless of size. Three municipal certification levels — standard, advanced and expert — allow jurisdictions to choose from lists of best management practices.

Committee members pressed witnesses on whether the law’s limited-liability language covers ordinary negligence or only gross negligence. Diers said the statute, as written and as reflected in the bill text before the committee, does not create blanket immunity: “you do have to…the first hurdle in all of this is the negligence hurdle. You can't be negligent and claim that simply because you're a Green Snow Pro certified that you somehow are magically not liable.”

Michael Johnson, a private attorney who has represented snow-removal companies in litigation, told the committee his trial experience showed the statutory immunity is not automatic and requires defendants to prove multiple elements. “The defendant has to prove that the immunity applies,” Johnson said. He described five elements he had to prove at trial, including commercial-applicator status, that the claimed injury arose solely from snow or ice, that the defendant’s conduct was not grossly negligent, that implementing best practices (including reduced salt use) caused the delay or condition, and that the defendant maintained written records of de-icing materials, application rates, dates and weather conditions. Johnson said the law has not stopped plaintiffs from filing suits but provides an additional defense tool; in his case the judge found four of five elements as a matter of law and left the fifth to the jury.

Both agency witnesses and the attorney acknowledged limits in available data. Velker and Diers said it is difficult to quantify chloride reductions because environmental responses lag and winters vary. Velker cited internal program data showing growth in certified applicators from about 35 in the program’s early years to over 700 applicators this past season across roughly 36 companies, but she said there is no definitive statewide denominator of all applicators. “There’s no actual database for that,” she said. Diers said the Department’s fee-funded program and partner training network (including the University of New Hampshire Technology Transfer Center, Smart About Salt and the Snow and Ice Management Association) support outreach and company adoption.

Senators also raised municipal workforce and fiscal questions. Velker said staff for the program has been run on a part-time position plus partner training; the department has not expanded staffing beyond existing personnel. For municipalities, she said, the program is newer and “a different animal” because municipal operations involve road networks rather than parking lots; some municipalities that adopted brine and calibration practices reported budget savings sufficient to buy new equipment.

No committee action or vote was recorded during the hearing; testimony concluded with committee members asking staff to follow up on implementation questions and available data on where the state’s salt is used.

Ending: Witnesses recommended continued outreach and data collection and described Green Snow Pro as a voluntary, fee-funded program that combines training, recordkeeping and a conditional limited-liability defense to encourage reduced salt use while preserving avenues for litigation when negligence or gross negligence are alleged.