Last week's hearing by the Holyoke Board of Health was shaping up to be a pretty dry affair.
While the topic was a hot one—a controversial proposal to build a solid-waste transfer station in the Springdale neighborhood—the agenda that night sounded anything but. According to an email sent around by the board, the November 6 meeting would be procedural, focusing on the ground rules establishing how the process would run.
In the end, however, the hearing proved as controversial as just about every other aspect of the proposal. While not a word was spoken about the specifics of the project, the meeting cut directly to one of the key issues of the debate: the community's role in deciding whether the station will be allowed.
From the time the project was first introduced last year, many Springdale residents have complained that they've been cut out of the decision-making process. City Councilor Diosdado Lopez, who represents Springdale, has described the process as secretive, and suggests the developer, United Waste Management of Bolton, Mass., and allies in City Hall hoped to slide the project in with minimal public notice—a strategy, he and other project opponents contend, made easier by the fact that a large majority of Springdale residents speak Spanish.
At last week's hearing, Lopez and others requested that subsequent hearings include a Spanish translator, so residents could follow and participate in the proceedings. But while the hearing officer suggested some ways to address the language barrier, none would come close to allowing the full participation of Spanish-speaking residents—leaving many to feel, once again, shut out of the process.
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Half an hour before the start of last week's hearing, several dozen people gathered in the parking lot outside Holyoke High School. Many held signs, written in Spanish on one side and English on the other, with messages like "Why are we building our future on trash?" and "Holyoke is not a waste dump."
Lopez—whose own sign read "This Project Stinks"—said he'd asked to have the hearing at Morgan Elementary, in Springdale. "It's not fair. They made it much harder by having it here," he said, noting that many in his ward don't have cars to drive to the high school.
At 6:20, 10 minutes before the hearing was to start, the group headed inside. "Let's go in," Lopez urged with a rueful smile. "I'm afraid they're going to start without us. They don't care about us." The demonstrators left their signs in a pile outside the door but continued, as they took their seats in the auditorium, the chant started outside: "No trash in Holyoke!"
The Board of Health had convened the hearing to consider UWM's application to build a waste transfer station at 686 Main Street, a vacant two-acre parcel next to the city's wastewater treatment facility. The station would be a dropoff site for solid municipal waste from local communities, as well as construction and demolition waste. The waste would be consolidated and then transported to landfills, some of it via train tracks that run alongside the site.
Opponents of the project worry about the noise and traffic generated by the 150 to 225 daily truck trips UWM estimates the station would create. They're concerned that the project will drive down property values in an already struggling neighborhood, and that adding more diesel trucks to Springdale's roads would pose health risks in a community where rates of asthma and other health problems are already above average.
UWM's president, Scott Lemay, believes opponents misunderstand the project. "People think there's pollution, and you're dumping on them," he told the Advocate earlier this year. But, he noted, the project is not a dump; it's a transfer station, where trash would be temporarily stored but not burned or otherwise processed. The transfer station, he added, would create jobs and generate tax revenue—a point that persuades many in the city, especially in such tough economic times.
At the end of the hearing process—which is expected to take at least a half dozen meetings over two months—the Board of Health will vote to approve or deny UWM's application; it can also impose certain conditions on the project, such as hours of operation.
The hearing also represents an opportunity for the public to weigh in on the project. At last week's three-plus hour session, several neighbors and activist groups successfully applied to participate in the hearing, which will allow them to present testimony and evidence, question other parties and, in some cases, appeal, should they disagree with the board's decision.
But for some residents, getting their voices heard won't be easy. While the audience made repeated requests that a Spanish translator be provided at future sessions, Arthur Krieger, a Cambridge attorney hired by the Board of Health (at Lemay's expense) to be hearing officer, said it just wouldn't be possible. A translator would be too costly and would make the hearings untenably long, Krieger said. Kerry Ryan, a Boston attorney hired to represent the board, also expressed concern about the precedent created if the city arranges translation for some public meetings but not others.
Krieger did suggest some partial remedies: the public could hire a Spanish-language court reporter to record the proceedings, or pay to have the transcripts translated. He also said he'll schedule short breaks at future sessions to allow residents to translate for their neighbors, and indicated he'll allow some on-the-spot translating for Spanish speakers who want to address the board. The board also agreed to hold future meetings at Morgan Elementary, if it's available.
Carlos Vega, the longtime former director of Nueva Esperanza Community Development Corp., told the board he was "flabbergasted" by the refusal to provide a translator. "The Holyoke history around this issue is very poor," Vega said. "This is a critical issue, and you can't take it lightly," he added, to the audience's applause.
City Councilor Kevin Jourdain reminded the board how many Springdale residents speak Spanish. "These are the people most directly affected by whatever happens," Jourdain said. "You're having a public meeting. Of whom are we speaking when we say 'the public'?"
