In the spring and summer of 1999, it seemed that everyone in Holyoke was talking about one thing: the quarry on Mount Tom.
Earlier that year, the owners of the defunct Mount Tom Ski Area had gone to the City Council requesting a permit to expand a traprock quarry on the property. At the time, the owners, Mary Rose O'Connell and Joe O'Donnell, were leasing a portion of the land to a local asphalt company, which was already mining about seven acres of the mountain; now they sought permission to expand the operation dramatically, to as much as 90 acres in the coming decades.
What resulted was an impressive, and effective, public outcry. Neighbors of the mountain complained that a bigger quarry would bring more trucks and pollution to the area, which sits in the northern part of the city, in the Highlands section. Environmentalists warned the project would endanger plant and animal habitats on the mountain. Others lamented the potential degradation of the mountain, regarded as the "jewel" of Holyoke.
Before long, the quarry became the hottest political issue in town. Anti-expansion lawn signs and bumper stickers reading "Mount Tom: I Don't Dig It" sprang up around the Highlands as well as in neighboring Northampton. The City Council was divided, with several councilors taking very strong positions against the project. Then-Mayor Dan Szostkiewicz, who originally supported allowing an extensive expansion, saw the writing on the wall and changed position. His change of heart came too late; in that November's election, he was defeated by Mike Sullivan, who ran as an expansion opponent.
In the end, the City Council denied the permit, citing environmental risks and traffic concerns. While O'Connell and O'Donnell fought that decision in Land Court, in the end, a deal was reached: the owners would sell the land to a coalition of government environmental agencies and local non-profits, who in turn would allow a slightly expanded quarry operation, to end in 2012.
A decade later and six miles south of Mount Tom, another community is fighting its own battle, with some striking similarities. This time, the neighborhood is Springdale, in South Holyoke, and the project is a solid waste transfer station proposed for 686 Main Street. Like the quarry's neighbors, Springdale residents are concerned about what the project would do to their environment, their property values and their quality of life. And, like the quarry's neighbors, transfer station opponents are calling on City Hall to protect their community.
But there the similarities end, according to a group of Smith College student researchers who have been investigating the transfer station proposal and the public process that will decide its fate. The Smith team (which will present its findings at a forum in Holyoke this Saturday) compared the transfer station debate to the quarry issue, using the latter an example of how community activism can defeat an unpopular project. Along the way, they examined the beliefs city residents and leaders hold about race and class in the city, uncovering some disturbing examples of a great divide that runs through the city along geographic, ethnic and economic lines.
What the students found was that, for all the parallels between the two projects, the model used by quarry opponents cannot simply be applied to the transfer station. Instead, they wrote in a report, deep-seated inequities within the city, tied up with race and class, mean the residents of Springdale have a lonelier and tougher fight ahead than did their counterparts in the Highlands.
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The students— Smith undergraduates Teresa Kenyon, Liz Bieber and Mia Teitelbaum, and Sarah Krautheim, who attends Mount Holyoke—wrote their paper for an upper-level sociology seminar taught by Professor Ginetta Candelario, a Holyoke resident and transfer station opponent. Their project built on work done in a similar seminar the previous spring in which students examined the transfer station proposal and concluded that only "a mass mobilization of the entire city of Holyoke" could stop the project.
But how to make that happen? The new research team began their work with a question: "How do populations of different demographics, such as South Holyoke and the Highlands, mobilize around what they identify as public health issues?"
They had another goal, too: to use what they found to help the city. In the past, they wrote, sociology researchers have used communities like Holyoke as a source of research material, a practice that has left some residents feeling exploited. In this project, the community would also benefit from its participation. "Specifically, we aspired to provide information to the citizens of Holyoke that could assist in efforts to mobilize residents around the Solid Waste Transfer Station," the students wrote.
The transfer station issue first emerged in 2007, when a Bolton, Mass.-based company called United Waste Management proposed the project for an empty lot adjacent to Holyoke's wastewater treatment center. The 22,575-square-foot facility would serve as a dropoff point for trash and construction and demolition waste collected in nearby communities. The waste would be consolidated at the station and then transported, by truck and rail, to landfills and recycling facilities.
Scott Lemay, CEO of UWM, points out that the project is neither a dump nor a trash processing plant. The waste, he told the Advocate in an earlier interview, would be moved through the facility quickly, before it had time to decompose. And, he added, it would bring benefits to the city, including much-needed jobs and what he estimated to be "hundreds of thousands" in tax revenue. (See "Trash Talk," Feb. 21, 2008)
But in Springdale, residents are far from reassured. Opponents of the project worry about the environmental risks, including those posed by the estimated 225 truck trips the station would generate in the neighborhood every day—a situation they find especially worrisome given the large number of kids who live in Springdale, and the elevated asthma rates in the area. Some believe that the project would never have been proposed in a wealthier or whiter neighborhood, and that the transfer station is yet another example of Holyoke's poorest residents being dumped on.
Indeed, the Smith research team believes, Springdale's high poverty rate and large population of Puerto Rican residents are both crucial factors in the debate over whether the project should be built.
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The transfer station proposal has already won approval from the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. Now it's before the Holyoke Board of Health, which has held a series of site-assignment hearings about the project since November. The Board, which is not bound by DEP's decision, can kill the project if members find it poses a danger to public health or the environment. If the Board approves the project, it can impose conditions, such as restricted hours of operation.
While the hearings offer some opportunity for public input, the students wrote, it's a limited opportunity at best. In part, they wrote, the problem lies with "the formality of the hearings, comparable in protocol to a trial."
At the first hearing, held Nov. 6, opponents found that before they could speak they faced several hurdles. For people to have their testimony considered by the Board of Health, they need to register seven days prior to the start of hearings, as well as submit all testimony in advance. (Because the registration deadline hadn't been publicly announced prior to the first hearing, it was waived by the hearing officer, who allowed people to register that night.) In addition, to participate in the hearings, residents needed to demonstrate that they would be affected by the project.
Arthur Krieger, a Cambridge attorney hired by the city to act as the hearing officer, would decide who qualified, and whether they would be considered "participants" (meaning that they can present testimony and question witnesses) or "intervenors" (who have the same rights as participants but, because they've demonstrated that they'd be directly affected by the project, can also appeal the Board's decision). Residents who didn't qualify as either could speak at a public comment period at the end of the multi-date hearing, although their testimony would not carry the same weight.
Much of that first hearing consisted of opponents scrambling to submit the necessary paperwork to participate in future hearings, a process made more difficult, the students wrote, because "the language used by Arthur Krieger when describing the procedures for the hearings was complicated, confusing, and filled with legal jargon." This was especially true for Spanish-speaking residents, who had to rely on others to translate the proceedings.
In addition, the Smith researchers wrote, "The location & of the hearings was another major barrier to participation for community members." While Ward 2 City Councilor Diosdado Lopez, who represents Springdale, had requested that the Board of Health hold the hearings at Springdale's Morgan Elementary School, the Nov. 6 hearing was held at Holyoke High School, which, Lopez pointed out, was inaccessible to his many constituents who don't own cars. While the Board agreed to consider moving future hearings to Morgan, it later determined that the public address system there was inadequate, and that subsequent meetings should also be held at the high school.
Another hot topic at the Nov. 6 hearing: whether the city would accommodate the many Springdale residents who speak Spanish as their primary language. Krieger and attorneys for UWM and the city "met this request with concerns including the expense of translation services, whether translations would serve as a distraction, and if providing translation at the hearing would set a precedent requiring that all city meetings and hearings provide translation in the future," the students noted. "Thus, by failing to offer translation the Board of Health would not guarantee equal access to participation in the process."
By the second hearing, on Dec. 1, translation services were provided courtesy of UWM, which contracted with the UMass Translation Center for headsets through which audience members could hear a Spanish translation of the proceedings. "Despite [CEO Scott] Lemay's generous offer, the translation services went unused at almost every subsequent hearing," wrote the students, who noted the $75 deposit required to use the headsets was " a sum of money very few individuals from South Holyoke have at their disposal." Others might not have realized the service would be offered, since Krieger indicated at the first hearing that translation would not be available, they added.
The Smith researchers contend that the entire structure of the hearings "results in unequal access to political participation." Specifically, they point to the fact that Board requires evidence offered in the hearing to have scientific backing—a requirement, it's important to note, that's consistent with state guidelines and that is designed to ensure the Board's decision is based on factual information.
Nonetheless, the students wrote, "only allowing scientific evidence to argue against the transfer station reveals how the government dictates and monopolizes legitimate forms of political participation. Consequently, the community is at a disadvantage, seeing as the average person does not understand and cannot argue against, for instance, an air quality test.
"Moreover, these procedures and laws presume that science is the only legitimate means of forming environmental policy, and that societal, historical, and political contexts should not be taken into consideration in a decision like the solid waste transfer station," the report continued.
Instead, the students note, the structure of the hearings pit residents without science or engineering backgrounds against experts hired by UWM. While a grassroots organization called Holyoke Organized to Protect the Environment, or HOPE, has formed to help fight the station, its members are all volunteers who have jobs, families and other responsibilities that limit the time they can spend researching the intricacies of a complex proposal like the transfer station. In addition, HOPE doesn't have funds to hire pricey experts to analyze the proposal and testify at the hearings.
In contrast, UWM has the resources to devote to advancing the project. "That is Scott Lemay's job," Teresa Kenyon, one of the Smith students, said in an interview. "Even folks who have 30, 40 years of activism experience in Holyoke & are at a severe disadvantage.
"It's anti-democratic," Kenyon said.
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When the Smith researchers began researching the battle over the quarry proposal, they found a very different story. It began with the differences between the two neighborhoods.
Springdale is a densely populated neighborhood, with many renters and multi-family units. It's also a poor neighborhood, with a large concentration of Puerto Rican residents. The area immediately surrounding the proposed transfer station site is already home to industries, including printers and paper and oil companies.
To some, the presence of other industries—as well as the fact that the site is already zoned for waste management— indicates that the project is the right match for the neighborhood. But opponents say Springdale, which also includes numerous homes, a school and park, bears the burden of enough industry already.
In the Highlands, the demographics and the geography are markedly different. It's located in the northern part of the city, just below Northampton (indeed, in recent years, homebuyers classed out of that city's pricey real estate market have settled in the Highlands, where they've been able to snatch up beautiful homes for a fraction of what they'd pay in Northampton). A largely residential neighborhood, particularly in the area around Mount Tom, the Highlands is the wealthiest part of a generally poor city; its residents, the Smith report notes, are "primarily & white residents of Irish, French Canadian, Polish, and Italian descent."
Not surprisingly, when it came time to fight its battle, the relatively well-heeled Highlands neighborhood found more resources at its disposal than Springdale has. Neighbors circulated petitions calling for the end of quarrying in the city and turned to the media for coverage. Established institutions such as the Audubon Society joined in the fight, lending legitimacy to the environmental case made against expanding the quarry. A local ad agency designed and donated anti-expansion signs and stickers. Opponents packed hearings and quickly put the mountain owners and the company doing the quarrying on the defensive.
Ginetta Candelario, the Smith researchers' professor, had moved to the Highlands in the midst of the battle. She recalls the intensity of the issue in the area, where many of her neighbors planted "I Don't Dig It" signs on their lawns. "My impression was there was a great deal of investment in this," in both Holyoke and Northampton, she said in a recent interview. That level of intensity is especially striking, she noted, because the quarry expansion wouldn't directly affect as many people as the transfer station would.
Much of the case against the quarry referred to the role Mount Tom played in the lives of Holyoke residents; everyone, it seemed, had a story to tell about learning to ski on Mount Tom as a kid. "The proposed expansion was described as 'the smashing of a crown jewel, the violation of a legacy and the trashing of a beautiful place,'" the Smith report noted. (Interestingly, this sentimental attachment to Mount Tom does not cross demographic lines, the report noted. While white Holyokers see the mountain as an important symbol of the city, "it does not play that role for Puerto Rican Holyoke at all," said Candelario.)
Much emphasis was placed on the environmental dangers posed by the quarry expansion, the Smith team noted. "For the Mt. Tom debate, the environmental question, or that of the harm that could potentially come to the wildlife and plant life of the mountain, were routinely used as arguments against the quarry's expansion," they wrote. "Furthermore, they were cited as one of the primary reasons for the City Council's rejection of the quarry owners' application for a permit to expand the quarry."
In contrast, they noted, "Because the [transfer station] is situated in the middle of the city, surrounded by residents, and was already zoned for waste management, the issue of the [station] having a detrimental effect on the environment cannot be argued." (Ironically, Candelario suggested, given existing environmental protection laws, the transfer station opponents would have better luck if they were fighting on behalf of wildlife, not people. "If we found salamanders were going to be affected by this project, that's all we'd need to bring this to a crashing halt," she said. Instead, the human risks that opponents warn of, such as concerns the project would contribute to already high asthma rates, seem to be considered "irrelevant," she said.)
Similarly, the Smith team wrote, while the City Council based its decision to reject the quarry permit in part on its potential to lower property values, "in the case of the [transfer station], this argument has not been given much weight."
These differences, the report continued, raise "the question of a hierarchy of values. Do wildlife and plant life have more rights than the people who live around the proposed site for the [transfer station]? Is the preservation of Mt. Tom more important because of the sentimental value it holds for the old 'Holyokers' as a symbol of a bygone 'Golden Era' in Holyoke's history?
"Does the [transfer station] matter less because of the neighborhood it is situated in, which is predominantly Puerto Rican and low-income? Does their quality of life matter less than [that of] the wealthier white Holyokers that live in the Highlands?"
Certainly, the students wrote, the Highlands residents found more support among major institutions, including environmental groups such as the Mass. Dept. of Environmental Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Trustees of Reservations and the Audubon Society. In contrast, in the case of the transfer station, "not a single institution has stepped in to either offer to purchase the land, or even to offer assistance in fighting the proposal."
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Transfer station opponents are not without their champions, most notably Councilor Lopez, the community organization Nuestras Raices, and the citizens' group HOPE. But to stop a project of this scope, they need support from across the city—something, the Smith report indicates, that seems unlikely to happen.
Holyoke is a divided city, starting along ethnic lines. While more than 40 percent of the city's population is Puerto Rican, that's not reflected in City Hall or other influential institutions. "The City Council provides a good example of political power in Holyoke, as it is concentrated in the hands of the white middle class," the students wrote. "The majority of its councilors claim white ethnic backgrounds and only one councilor, [Lopez], identifies as Latino." While the Council consists of both ward and at-large members, the majority comes from upper Holyoke, with only two from South Holyoke. Of the 15 members, only three are women.
Because people of color have little representation within the city's power structures, the issues that matter to them don't get the same attention as those that affect the city's white middle-class residents, the team argued. "[It's] a tenet of sociological theory that individuals tend to mobilize with those that they spend the most time with," they wrote. "Individuals will most likely mobilize around issues that either they or their friends are passionate about."
As part of their research, the students asked interview subjects to draw a "cognitive map" of Holyoke, which would allow the team a glimpse into how each person saw the city and his or her own place in it. "The map visually depicts what aspects of the community are most representative and symbolic for that particular individual," the researchers wrote. "[W]hat an individual does not include is as important, if not more important, than what the individual draws on his or her mental map."
As a sociological tool, the map project can be an especially useful way to get at people's true feelings about a subject many are loath to address: race. The student researchers wrote of a "new racism," one that "developed as individuals, despite retaining racist notions, learned that expressing these beliefs is no longer socially acceptable." Instead, they simply avoid discussing or even acknowledging issues of race.
But just because people won't discuss race doesn't mean race doesn't matter—particularly in a city like Holyoke. "Although many citizens of Holyoke will not discuss it, especially if they are involved in city politics, there is a divide in Holyoke separating not only downtown from the Highlands, but also White from Latino," the Smith researchers wrote. And that divide can be especially damaging when it comes to public policy and government.
By way of example, the Smith team pointed to one unnamed city councilor they spoke to (a number of participants requested to be anonymous in the report). While the councilor "insisted throughout the interview that he spent a good part of every week in the lower wards," his map of the city stopped at High Street, leaving out the southern sections.
"The fact that the lower wards are comprised primarily of a Puerto Rican population that does not hold much political power due to its young age and lack of homeowner status results in a lack of interest and concern from the city government," the report contended. Another city councilor, when asked if she campaigns in South Holyoke, told the Smith team, "No. There's not enough votes down there for someone who had to& pull in an at-large vote. [I]t wasn't strategic for me to go into Ward 1 or 2."
In its interviews, the research team found that white and Latino Holyokers tend to have profoundly different views about race—starting with the fact that Latinos are much more likely to see racism as a problem in the city. As Lopez put it, "We still have a lot of racism and discrimination, even though a lot of people don't think it is happening. There is institutional discrimination; they put up a lot of barriers, and if you are not working in the system, you will not see it."
Some interview subjects acknowledged the lack of Latino representation in city government; one councilor, for instance, spoke of the language barrier and other factors that can make public meetings inaccessible.
"On the other hand, others demonstrated a clear lack of awareness when it came to the accessibility of the meetings," the Smith team wrote. "For example, one councilor replied & 'They're accessible. & You know, if you wanted to get there you could hire a babysitter if you had kids,' completely disregarding the classist assumptions embedded within that statement, that one would have the money to hire a babysitter for the night, or that one did not have to work a night shift. &
"[N]ot all the interviewees were completely unaware of the shortcomings of the Holyoke government with regards to serving the needs of the Latino population," the researchers continued. "However, the explanations given for these shortcomings did not seem to quite grasp the magnitude of the issue, nor fully understand what could be done to solve it [or] why current efforts might not be successful."
Some respondents placed the blame with the Latino community. For example, two city councilors "emphasized the lack of initiative or commitment on the part of the Latino community to being involved in the political process."
One councilor, the researchers wrote, observed that "Latinos never appear to be working." Latinos, the councilor added, "don't have any high aspirations about education or about what they want to do with their lives, and it's not necessarily their own fault, it's just because no one's encouraged them, no one's been there for them, and there's just a whole atmosphere of a certain, I don't want to call it, like a subculture of people who just don't take advantage of what's available because they don't think they can do it or they don't want to do it and nobody encourages them. &
"There's no reason why they couldn't get an education in the schools today," the councilor continued. "They just don't do it. & It doesn't relate to them and their lifestyle, what they've chosen as their lifestyle. It's not something that's important to them and they don't take advantage." Such comments, the Smith team wrote, minimize the effect of racism on the marginalization of Holyoke's Latino community.
In some cases, the researchers wrote, interview subjects were blatantly racist—like the person who "insisted that Puerto Ricans were the reason Holyoke was going downhill, that they were all thieves, and it is simply too dangerous to go downtown." One city councilor attributed the decline of a neighborhood to "the people who are living there, and the blacks, in the houses that are rented. A lot of them are involved in criminal activities; they cause problems for the neighborhood."
Even individuals or organizations that profess to value the city's diversity often have trouble breaking through Holyoke's firm racial and geographic boundaries, the Smith team wrote. They point, for example, to Citizens for the Revitalization and Urban Success of Holyoke, or CRUSH, a group of residents and business owners focused on reviving the city. "Our mission is to create positive change by facilitating connections between people, resources, and ideas," CRUSH notes on its website.
But in an interview with the researchers, City Councilor Rebecca Lisi, a CRUSH founder, spoke of the trouble the group has had attracting Latinos. The Smith students suggested some possible reasons: to publicize its events, CRUSH relies on word-of-mouth and its webpage, which is of little use to people without computer access. The students described the space where the group meets as "exceedingly white; the regulars are all white and& are dressed in business casual and sipping on cocktails from the bar." When one student researcher attended a CRUSH meeting, according to the report, she found that many members were not even aware of the transfer station issue.
"One of the primary questions asked during this research project was how would individuals mobilize, and what would it take to mobilize the entirety of Holyoke behind one issue?" the Smith team wrote. What they found was that people get involved in issues that directly affect them, with the people they know best. And with so much of the city's political and social capital in its northern wards, it does not bode well for South Holyoke.
"While it is highly probable that the [transfer station] will be built& important questions have been asked throughout the process about why the community of South Holyoke is excluded from participating politically in the process," the report noted. "What needs to happen now is for the entire community of Holyoke to take interest in the health, space and safety of not only the most powerful but, more importantly, the already disadvantaged."
This weekend, the Smith team will present its research at a public forum, where it hopes to bring together local community and political leaders. "It seems fairly obvious there's this divide in Holyoke between the Highlands and lower Holyoke," said Mia Teitelbaum, one of the Smith students. "But in government especially, it's really important to drive that point home."
The forum will be held on Sat., Feb. 7, from noon to 2 p.m. at El Mercado, 413 Main St., Holyoke. Lunch will be provided to the first 30 people to arrive. For more information, contact Professor Ginetta Candelario at 413-585-3454.
