CLAREMONT — Opponents of a Massachusetts company’s plan to bring 500 tons of construction and demolition debris per day to its facility on Industrial Boulevard are ratcheting up their campaign ahead of the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services’ public hearing on Thursday.

The previously postponed hearing will be held in the Claremont Opera House beginning at 6 p.m.

Acuity Management, which owns Recycling Services, is asking the DES to modify its 1987 permit to allow for construction and demolition material to be accepted at its facility where the company said it will sort for recyclables and ship the remainder out of state by rail.

The city has twice denied Acuity’s request for a variance because it was defined as a transfer station operation, which is not allowed in the industrial district.

The permit modification application states the following materials would be at the facility: “newsprint, aluminum, corrugated (asbestos-free) paper items, industrial iron, glass, metal cans, automotive batteries, tires, and C&D debris.”

The opposition to Acuity’s plan has grown more public in the last few weeks with opponents creating a website with an online petition, urging residents to attend the hearing and to tell DES to deny the permit modification.

Former Claremont Mayor Charlene Lovett said Acuity’s plans to truck “toxic material” into the city “flies in the face” of the city’s economic development and improved public health efforts.

As mayor, Lovett worked to increase childhood lead testing in Claremont and said today the city has the highest lead screening rates in the state. She said the city is not only actively trying to identify when children get poisoned by lead but to prevent it in the first place.

“I have done a lot of work on childhood lead poison prevention,” Lovett said in a phone interview. “They are talking about bringing in construction and demolition material that has lead in it and we all know how lethal as far as brain development is with lead paint dust and C&D is full of it. To bring it into a community at that location and that proximity to homes and a school, it is so in opposition to what we are trying to do.”

Lovett and others say the 1-acre parcel on the railroad siding near the Amtrak station is inappropriate for the scope of the proposed operation and would destroy roads, create noise and dust and contaminate groundwater.

“This is a story of out-of-state interests colliding with local and regional efforts to achieve goals that further economic development in the tourism and recreational industry and improve public health,” Lovett said later in an email. “As Granite Staters, the overarching question is should we allow out-of-state interests to inhibit our ability to achieve the goals we have adopted for our own economic and health benefits?”

More information and the petition opposing the permit modification can be found at: https://sites.google.com/view/say-no-to-acuity/home.

For those who cannot attend the hearing, the public comment period will continue for two more weeks, until March 20. After that, DES will have 30 days to issue a ruling.

Written testimony can be submitted one of three ways: By email to swpublic.comment@des.nh.gov; by regular mail to NHDES-SWMB Attn: Jason Evancic, PO Box 95, Concord, NH 03302; or by hand delivery to NHDES’ office at 29 Hazen Drive, Concord.

The complete application from Acuity can be viewed online at: https://www4.des.state.nh.us//DocViewer/?ContentId=5109350.

Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.com.