Welcome to the Energy/Environment Working Group’s live blog! The co-chairs of the working group will be online from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm, and they’ll be responding directly to your comments and questions on this thread. So fire away — they’re listening!
Please share widely!
Hello. I’m Jim Gomes, one of the co-chairs (with Sue Tierney) of the Energy and Environment Working Group of the Transition. We’ve been going around the state to hear peoples ideas, hopes, and concerns, and we’re here on BMG today to continue that process.
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So much for the preliminaries. To get things started, it would be great if you would tell us on what three issues in the Energy/Environment area you’d most like to see the new administration make progress, and what that progress would look like. If you have a different way of approaching this, by all means use it: my goal is just to get the discussion going. Thanks.
I was at the meeting Monday night and found it very informative. My ideas are mostly on the energy side, so I’ll talk about those: I especially think this is the area that their needs to be the most new and innovative government action.
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(I mentioned more of this in my sheet I gave you guys at the forum)
We have your information from Monday’s forum at Northeastern and will be considering it. We really appreciate your attending the forum and your posting here at BMG.
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Jim
As you can guess, we’re hearing from SO MANY people about this issue, and the Governor-elect’s goal to drive both our home-grown energy production and our knowledge-based job development in this area. It’s a huge global market, and we’ve got some important comparative advantages — on both the resource side (e.g., way off shore wind…) and on the innovation side. Thanks
Sue and Jim,
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Thank you for yet another opportunity to share with you our environmental concerns.
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I’ve already spoken to the committee about the sad state of our environmental budget, and I hope that there are steps Governor-elect Patrick will be able to take to help restore the programs that protect us.
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Our environmental agencies unfortunately just do not have the resources to fulfill their mandates–it is not just the parks that suffer, but also water quality, hazardous waste cleanup, and air quality. With new statutory requirements in 2006–with the passage of the mercury products bill and the Toxics Use Reduction Act update–our agencies now have increased duties that also must be funded.
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There are also bills that have been passed in the last decade that have not been fully implemented, such as the Beaches Act and the Children and Families Protection Act. These laws are important to protecting our children in the places they live and play. I urge Governor-elect Patrick to mandate that his agencies fully implement these programs.
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Thank you,
Megan Amundson
Hi Megan.
Thanks for following up on the funding questions. We’re pretty aware of the state of the environmental budgets and the strains they’ve posed for the agencies and more importantly for their missions. Please feel free to follow up with more information to the website, if you’d like.
Thanks
I’ll be sure to get you our Green Budget recommendations next week when we finalize them. They will hopefully assist our new governor in determining his priorities.
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Thanks!
Please let the Transition’s Budget and Finance Working Group know right away that these recommendations will be forthcoming.
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Jim
Hi – Adding to what Jim Gomes just said, please let us know your ideas about things the Administration should attend to right off the bat, as compared to over the long haul. Recognizing that there will be an enormous number of things you’d like to see the new team address, what are some of the earliest things they should focus on, in your view…..?
Sue
Thank you, Sue and Jim, for all the listening you are doing.
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I agree with the comments about the need for immediate attention to our parks, but am distressed that the principles do not include any mention of rivers, lakes and coastal waters. The 1989 Rivers Policy set a good agenda for protecting and restoring these critical assets, and we’ve invested a lot — espec in the Boston Harbor cleanup — but have lost momentum in recent years. And we are coming face to face with the severe impact of development pressures on water supply and rivers drying up — something I imagine few in this moist climate expected to ever see.
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A quick start to a revived water resources effort would be a review of the 1989 policy, assessment of our progress against that, and development of a new 5-year action plan. I am submitting written comments with specific recommendations, but for now I just want to emphasize the need to put water resources on the short list of principles.
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thanks
Nancy Hammett
The Governor-elect’s principles do include promoting conservation, which includes water conservation, and having government practice what it preaches, which has implications for how our state and cities and towns protect and manage water resources.
Thanks for your reply.
I’m glad the conservation and government practice principles will be interpreted broadly. I still would hope to see a more explicit statement about water resources, because “conservation” might be taken to refer only to low flow problems, and we need a major push on water quality (e.g., stormwater, sewage pollution) and habitat health as well. And government is only one of the players, albeit a key one.
Nancy
Thanks, Nancy, for the input on water quality, water supply, water conservation…..We’re hearing a lot about it.
The state parks have suffered from neglect for too long. With a intensive focus on repair, defered maintenance and upgrades, and improved staffing, a new Governor can make environmental progress in a very short timeframe and in a way that the public will see and appreciate.
Thanks for the comment on the state of the parks, and the need for greater attention to them. We’ve heard this from many, many people at our outreach sessions and are looking at it closely.
Cheers –
Hello,
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I am Jean Zotter and I direct the Boston Urban Asthma Coalition. Many of the Commonwealth’s children are struggling to breathe with Massachusetts having one of the highest asthma rates in the country. Studies have found asthma development and asthma attacks to be linked to: substandard housing and school conditions, poor outdoor air quality – especially diesel exhaust, exposure to toxic chemicals, among other things.
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We would like to see the Patrick administration take a leadership role on the following issues to help lower this too high asthma rate:
1. Healthy and Green Affordable Housing. Many children in Boston are struggling to breathe in their own homes. Studies have found that eliminating asthma triggers in the home can improve asthma for those who live in substandard housing. The Boston Urban Asthma Coalition and the Asthma Regional Council have developed easy to follow and affordable construction guidance that the state should adopt when it funds or builds new affordable housing. Also, the state should secure resources to improve existing substandard housing especially in public and subsidized housing. Local studies in Boston have found that eliminating pest problems, removing carpets and reducing moisture in existing housing can have a big affect on children’s health. More information can be found at the Boston Urban Asthma Coalition website: http://www.buac.org.
2. Reducing exposure to diesel exhaust. The state should take a leadership role in enforcing the anti-idling law, switching all buses and school buses to retrofit technology, and supporting the purchasing of CNG buses.
3. Reducing exposure to toxic chemicals. Toxic chemicals can affect a child’s health in many ways – one of them is to trigger, and sometimes cause asthma attacks. The Alliance for Healthy Tommorrow and the Boston URban Asthma Coalition have been working to remove toxic chemicals from the schools, hospitals and public housing. Last year, the Alliance submitted a bill on this. The Patrick administration should work to see a similar bill pass or adopt it through Executive Order. For more information, go to http://www.healthyto…
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I appreciate the opporunity to share our opinions and look forward to see progress under the new administration. Thank you for taking the effort to hear from the community on these issues.
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Jean Zotter, Executive Director
Boston Urban Asthma Coalition
Health, environment, energy, housing, transportation — all of these intersect in the problem of asthma, and there are many other intersections as well.
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Jim
The rates of asthma are alarming. But we need an inclusive look at health risks. The Patrick/Murray tranistion should look carefully before recommending controls on solvents in certain settings. For example, hosptial-acquired infections are a major killer. If we tell hosptials to stop using the products that are most effective for sterilizing rooms and equipment, it may prevent secondary health effects, like asthma attacks — but the pulbic health will not benefit if infections increase.
We’ve been hearing a lot about the desirability of safer substitutes for toxics — substances or materials that are just as effective as the ones they replace but with fewer risks associated with them.
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Jim
THis too is an issue that’s come up from a lot of folks — probably a reflection of the fact that asthma is touching so many lives these days. You’ve probably seen that one of the Patrick/Murray core principles in energy/environment is to limit toxics, so it’s helpful to hear your concrete thoughts there. We appreciate your hard work on this too.
Also another note on toxics is that asthma is not the only disease with links to toxins in our environment–and not the only disease reaching epidemic proportions. Research is increasingly finding that exposure to chemicals could contribyute to many kinds of cancer including childhood cancers; learning disabilities; Parkinson’s Disease, ALS and other neurodegenerative illnesses and many others. Reducing environmental toxins is an “environmental” issue and much of the responsibility for change rests in our environmental agencies, but it has great implications for our health and safety, too.
Sue, Is nuclear power a viable option in New England? It is vastly safer than it was 30 years ago, and no CO2 is dumped into the atmosphere.
I think if we approach it very carefully, nuclear could be an option, and though the spent radioactive material is bad, it’s probably better than burning fossil fuels. Improved reprocessing would be a good place to start before building.
and no CO2 is dumped into the atmosphere.
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For the record, that isn’t true. The nuclear plant itself releases very little CO2, but the fuel itself must be mined. The process of mining is a nasty one, because of the chemicals used, the machinery used (releasing lots of CO2), and the environmental impact on the landscape and ecosystem when the mine is abandoned.
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Does producing 1 MWhour of electricity from a nuclear plant release as much CO2 as one from a coal plant? Probably not.
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However, to claim the emissions of CO2 with nuclear is zero is false, since the process of acquiring nuclear fuel releases CO2.
I did not intend to imply zero emission of CO2 from the full life-cycle production of 1kWh of electricity. All methods of electricity production have their ‘overhead’ CO2 emission levels – and they are all pretty much the same. Your specious argument does not put CO2 emissions from the different forms of electricity production in proper perspective. For example, compare hydroelectric, wind turbine, and nuclear fission – they are not burning any hydrocarbons, but they all have a small CO2 emission level. This analysis is from a strong proponent of nuclear energy, but you will be hard pressed to find another analysis that would significantly change these life-cycle emission numbers:
Generation option Emissions gram equiv CO2/kWh
Hydropower2-48
Coal – modern plant790-1182
Nuclear2-59
Natural gas (NGCC)389-511
Biomass 15-101
Wind7-124
Photovoltaic13-731
My name is Leise Jones and I work with Clean Water Action and the Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow (AHT). I spoke at the hearing on Monday night, but would like to second Jean Zotter’s comments regarding asthma and the environment.
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Unnecessary toxic chemicals are impairing our health, but safer alternatives are available for many of the dangerous chemicals and dangerous products we currently use. The Patrick administration should take swift action to reduce toxic chemical use and exposure throughout the state and state purchasing policies are an excellent place to start. A transition to safer alternatives can start with cleaning products in state-owned and occupied buildings (including public schools and public housing), and extend further to all products that public agencies and institutions purchase. Our state has an excellent program in place to encourage Environmentally Preferable Purchasing, which can be expanded to include more less-toxic products. Additionally, Governor Baldacci in Maine recently passed an Executive Order that directs state agencies to avoid products that contain carcinogens or other toxic ingredients. Through changes to purchasing policies, the state can greatly reduce its consumption and use of toxic products and protect public health and our environment.
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But the new administration can do much more to reduce toxic chemical use than just buy safer products, and AHT will be submitting formal comments to detail a few recommendations. Supporting safer alternatives legislation, enforcing existing laws, and directing state agencies to use their authority to regulate toxic consumer products are all steps the administration can take to show their commitment to our environment, and to our environmental health.
Hello –
Let me just say that right now (as of calendar year 2005), nuclear power provides about a fourth of New England’s electricity. (Massachusetts’ electricity is drawn from New England’s grid.) About 1/8th of our power plant capacity is nuclear.
The issue of “what’s viable,” of course is a product of lots of economic, environmental, financial, safety, and other issues. At present, as you may know, there are no proposals for new nuclear plants for anywhere in New England.
Perhaps we’ll just note your comment for the record…and you’ll forgive me for dodging the viability question!
Thanks.
Sue
Leise – Thanks for following up. I remember you from MOnday’s meeting at Northeastern. Thanks for attending then, and for weighing in again now.
Sue and Jim:
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Thanks for having this blog – great process!
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One of the drivers of land consumption in the state is residential development on large lots. We need to have reforms of the state zoning and planning laws and incentives for cities and towns to cluster homes together in village centers and near existing public infrastructure and take development pressure off natural areas. To both protect land and address our affordable housing crisis, we need a set of zoning reforms and incentives for housing and mixed-use development. This would have to be a legislative reform, but because it’s a tricky balancing of home rule and development interests, we need the Governor-elect to shepherd the package through the process.
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Thanks,
Kristina Egan
Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance
Kristin – Were you at the Worcester Smart Growth conference last week? The themes you’re raising here were discussed throughout the day – and we received lots of comments about the zoning issue (and the need for balancing all the issues you mention) at our energy/environment meetings.
Sue,
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Yes, I was in Worcester and testified. When the Smart Growth Alliance did listening sessions around the state two years ago with environmentalists, housing advocates, planners, businesses and developers, the top priority in 6 out of 7 regions was “zoning reform” (the exception being Boston). Zoning reform means different things to different people, but we think a package that 1) takes ecologically significant land off the development map; 2) provides incentives to cities and towns to build more housing in appropriate locations; and c) strengthens planning (by eliminating Approval Not Required, reducing grandfathering, and making zoning consistent with planning) would radically shift Massachuetts’ development patterns.
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Kristina
Hi Kristin. I thought I remembered your name from the comments at the meeting! Anyway, thanks for the further explanation, and for your long-time work in this area.
Sue,
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I also should mention our other two top priorities for the administration:
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* New funding streams for transit, walking and biking. People are driving longer and further, which is, of course, related to our terrible zoning laws, but also partially to the lack of funding for alternatives to driving. We have a serious backlog in maintenance, so we can’t even afford modest expansion.
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* Raise the bond cap by $250 million. We need to invest more in our parks, land acquisition, housing in good locations, and public transit.
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Thanks,
Kristina
So far, this has been great comment. Thanks, everyone.
And we’ll be on for a while longer, if you’ve got more to say.
Remember there are ways to get us comment beyond this lovely live blog (descending as it does, right in the middle of your day job….):
— You can always send us comment by way of the Patrick/Murray Transition website – http://www.patrickmu…
Just put in the subject line “energy and environment” and your comments will be directed to our working group.
— There are also two more community meetings – in Taunton on Monday evening, the 11th; and in Lenox, the following night (the 12th, duh). Look on the calendar (at your upper left corner) for more details.
Thanks…Keep the feedback rolling in….
Hello everyone – and good bye for now.
I know that we said that Jim and I would be on for TWO, count ’em, two hours this morning, but I’ve got to jump off right now. My own day job has called me back to reality, so I’ll just look at your postings later on today.
Jim’s stickin’ around, I believe.
And of course you’re welcome to send us more of your views as the days roll along. And the new team will continue to look for your input over the long-haul.
Thanks for spending the morning with us!!
Sue
I’ll be here ’til at least 12:30. And as Sue said in an earlier post, our Working Group will be holding more listening sessions, and our e-mail boxes are waiting for more ideas. Also, anyone who starts a new energy or environment-related thread here at BMG will certainly catch our eye as well. Thanks for all your ideas and commitment.
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Jim
Maybe there’s a way to kill two birds with one stone.
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It’s clear that renewable energy is essential, and its clearly on Deval Patrick’s radar.
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It’s also clear that towns are in a fiscal crunch, and while health care costs may be the lion’s share of the increases, increasing energy costs have hurt towns as well.
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In the long run, it would be best if towns were building/renovating to really improve energy efficiency. The trouble is, that’s more expensive and sometimes its hard to float a bond with those extra costs.
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So: can the state help fund energy conservation/renewable energy projects designed/built by/paid for the towns? If my town hall is renovating and they could improve the boiler and windows to reduce consumption, they might not due to high nominal costs and it might be harder to ask for that high dollar Prop 2.5 override. But, if the state helped fund the improved energy design, it might make things easier.
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I’m thinking of something like a project-by-project CPA type deal. Fund the “pot” with a tiny surcharge on each kW/h of elec used, each therm of natural gas used, each gallon of heating oil used, each gallon of gasoline used, etc. These taxes could be really small since so many units of energy are purchased. Now, take that money and make it available in the form of grants to towns who are pursuing projects that will significantly and measurably reduce energy consumption (or even generate energy ie solar cells, municipal waste gas plants, etc.).
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End result: you lower the town’s long term costs (and risk of cost escalation) and help reduce the need to use coal or oil fired power plants, etc.
Does anyone else have a view about this suggestion? Is there experience with this idea or anything like it that might inform the new administration’s thinking?
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Jim
All kidding aside though, I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE this idea!
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It’s like the perfect win-win-win.
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1. Energy surcharge: energy should be more expensive than it is anyway…the true cost of dirty fuels is not reflected in its price (the pollution, the health costs for the public, etc). The more it gets used, the more revenue it generates for the program, and the more local governments use the program and reduce their energy needs, the less the impact of the small surcharge. Earmark this surcharge though, carefully, so it is used appropriately.
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2. Program motivates the towns to invest – which is hard doing it only at the local level as stomv says, because they are so close to the bottom line (ie local tax increase = super not popular) by using a state-run program to allow it to be “free” for them to do.
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3. Reap the benefits of cleaner air, cheaper energy from reduced useage, and a reduction of the need for greenhouse-causing energy production.
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This could be translated to all sorts of incentives, apart from just local government!
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I love you guys.
This idea should be incorporated into EVERY school that is built from now on. Extra monies should be earmarked solely for the purpose of investing in the more-expensive energy-saving elements, so that towns can save more money down the road and also need less energy.
From my blog where I posted this idea. And also my answer to it:
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Well, I’d just like to reiterate that Environmental Justice ought to be a priority. Whether it’s cleaning up mercury, heating homes more efficiently, or lowering the use of peak energy plants, environmental degredation seems to often go hand in hand with the suffering of those with the lowest incomes.
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What can be done?
And what do YOU think government should do to redress environmental injustice?
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Jim
where a few parks have line items for their maintenance, mostly thanks to friends in the legislature, while most others are neglected.
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In the short term, clean up some of the neglected parks that are near mixed-income neighborhoods. In the long term, fund the whole system.
There are projects in environmental justice that are funded by the federal government. I’d like to see the state invest more in that. I honestly don’t really know what’s already being done.
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In addition, the federal government also has working groups on the issue. It seems that there could be a state wide working group to address MA specific issues.
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I’d also point you to the NDRC which has a listing of grassroots organizations that the Administration could work with to promote the issue.
I believe there are a number of things Governor-elect Patrick will have the power to do relating to environmental justice.
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EOEA has an environmental justice policy that it passed just a few years ago that is ready to be updated. Unfortuantely, that policy only applies to Environmental Affairs and not to the other state agencies that also impact EJ communities. The new Governor will have the power to both update the policy and expand its reach in state government.
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In addition, there is room for a new administration to begin looking at the various agencies in regard to how its own permitting and funding structures and processes impact EJ communities. EJ communities are not adversely impacted by private industry alone–for example, our own transportation system can cause far more lasting harm.
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There are a number of us who will be providing EJ recommendations for the new Governor that will include recommendations for updating the EOEA policy and an Executive Order. We will be sure to submit those recommendations to the committe.
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Thanks,
Megan Amundson
We would like the Transition Team’s priorities to recognize that not all Massachusetts-generated hydropower is “green”, and that careful environmental impact assessments of all hydroelectric projects should be performed PRIOR to awarding funding. Hydroelectric power CAN severely impact river flows, altering already-impacted habitat for fish. Most hydroelectric power involves dams which create impediments to fish passage, river flow, circulation and wildlife habitat and create a natural trap for sediment, which in many New England rivers has pollutants. In the case of the Assabet River these pollutants include heavy phosphorus loads.
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Our example: The Assabet River has severe nutrient pollution problems and municipalities are making large investments to reduce their wastewater contributions to this problem. It is critical that the river’s natural flow be maintained in order to dilute effluent and prevent biomass blooms, as well as maintain fisheries, and meet its Class B designation under the Clean Water Act. However a proposal to resume small-scale hydropower generation would divert most of the river’s flow, leaving only a minimum flow in the bypassed section of the river through most of the year. It is clear to us, and the state and federal environmental agencies involved, that this hydro facility would create a net detriment to the environment, yet it has been awarded a large implementation grant by Renewable Energy Trust, a quasi-public agency.
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OAR supports clean energy, but hydropower has side effects which can harm the environment. We urge the team to ensure that environmental review is required before the award of state or quasi-state funding is approved for hydro projects. Also, we support the team investigating alternative means of generating hydroelectricity that don’t involve dams (check out current driven turbines such as the Verdant Power turbine in the Merrimack River).
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Forsyth P. Kineon, Executive Director
Organization for the Assabet River
If you have additional detail on this, please send it to info@devalpatrick.com. Put “Energy and Environment Working Group” in the subject line.
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Jim
Disjointed, that is, from the comments I submitted to the working group at the transition web site this morning. I hit the 2000-word limit before I could acknowledge the work you are doing.
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I am sure this process will also have limits, but it is tremendously energizing to see it happening and to see some of the community groups who are speaking up.
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Thank you!
An immediate action that the new administration could take would be to support revised State regulations that streamline dam removal and promote river restoration. This would help us meet water quality standards and boost the recreational value of rivers and we would heartily support it.
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Alison Field-Juma, Policy Director
Organization for the Assabet River
We appreciate all your thoughtful comments and your good work.
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Jim
At the risk of preaching to the choir:
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I hope the new administration will move quickly on new programs to capture the potential energy efficiency gains that slip though our fingers every day.
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It’s not a sexy as alternative energy (which I also support) or pie-in-the-sky nuclear (which I don’t) but efficency is the cheapest, fastest, and least painful way to reduce global-warming emissions and other environmental harm for the production of energy.
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As a bonus any state economy that uses energy efficiently has a real competative edge going forward.
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The greatest potential for action is on the demand side.
Please help the new administration drill down to the next level: what are the energy efficiency opportunities that state government (as opposed to the feds or citizens or companies generally) can seize and make and measure progress on? Either offer your thoughts here or at info@devalpatrick.com (subject line “Energy and Environment Working Group”).
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Jim
I guess I would first like to state a principle: What we do to the environment is a reflection of what we do to one another.
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As such, we really need to think about human interactions, and the organization of labor, FIRST, because how we work and interact determines how we pollute. If we don’t have the resources to treat each other nicely and maintain a quality of life standard, then we will never be able to offer the same to the environment.
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One of the biggest wastes of human labor is spent commuting. Every local economy should be self-sustaining for the people who live there. Unfortunately, all the economic development councils are trying to attract people to a center. Boston, for example, draws commuters from 50 miles away or more. Increasing the efficiency of moving the people 50 miles (via mass transit, etc.) is really not an improvement in the quality of life AND the environment.
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The goal of every town should be to have 100% home ownership and local jobs. People need to have a vested interest in the land. (This used to be called stewardship, until the term was mis appropriated to mean donations.)
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Before you can have a strategy you must have a goal, and before the goal you must establish the principle. The principle always reveals what is wrong. A degrading environment degrades the quality of life, and what enhances the quality of life is a better use of human time.
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We really need to reinvent the bottom line because people are chasing jobs rather than doing them. That gets into a broader economic discussion, but the reason we have so much waste is that it is profitable. We manufacture things in the hope that people will throw it away or consume it and buy more. The landfills are evidence of a huge inefficiency of human labor.
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We need to live with a smaller and simpler footprint. The imbalances between the rich and the poor is reflected in the damaged environment, that is why we need to get everybody into their own housing mortgage free. It is the shifting of debt that is driving economic decisions.
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Money has become a commodity, and it is more profitable to manipulate money than any other work. Our economy is built on banking, insurance and investing, all of which drives up the costs of living. It is unproductive counting. People are more concerned about numbers on a ledger than they are about people or the environment.
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We need to reinvent the bottom line because it is our fidelity to the bottom line, rather than to people, that is driving all the pollution and the destruction of nature. Basically, what happened to the buffalo is now happeneing to the land, air and water. We are driving it almost into extinction, and us along with it. The environmental issue is not a new problem, and it WILL NOT be solved with new technology.