The Springfield Public Health Council’s job is to advise the mayor on matters that could have detrimental effects on the health and well-being of city residents.
And that, say a group of local activists, is why the Council should weigh in on the wood-burning power plant proposed for Page Boulevard in East Springfield.
Last week, Stop Toxic Incineration in Springfield—a grassroots organization made up of neighborhood, public health, environmental and social justice groups—came to the PHC’s monthly meeting to present a petition calling on the group to investigate the potential effects of the plant, proposed by Palmer Renewable Energy. STIS maintains that the PHC has both the legal right and the responsibility to take up the matter.
“The Public Health Council is the guardian of public health in Springfield. It is responsible for assessing whether the proposed incinerator is harmful to Springfield residents or dangerous to public health,” Pat Markey, a former city solicitor who has been working with STIS on a pro bono basis, said in announcing the petition. “We hope that it exercises the authority vested in it by state statute to consider the appropriateness of locating an incinerator in the heart of Springfield.”
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The $150 million, 35-megawatt plant would burn almost 1,200 tons of “green” wood chips a day. In a project description filed with the state, Palmer Renewable Energy says the chips would be supplied by Northern Tree Service of Palmer, and would “be limited to clean (uncontaminated) non-forest woody material, such as tree stems, branches, stumps and brush,” from sources including private landscapers, developers and municipal parks departments.
An earlier version of the plan called for the burning of construction and demolition waste. The developers dropped that plan after strong concerns were raised about the potential release of toxins such as arsenic and lead.
PRE describes the plant as a way to produce sustainable energy using an environmentally sound process. In 2008, when the project first came to public attention, developers said the plant would create 50 full-time jobs and offered a number of perks to the city, called “host community benefits,” including $667,000 for local improvements, such as road paving and new street lights, and $25,000 for environmental programs in the city schools. (The plant manager and PRE’s attorney, Frank Fitzgerald of Springfield, have not responded to interview requests from the Advocate.)
But the ever-widening group of plant opponents say those perks won’t begin to offset the harm that would be done to the city’s—and, indeed, the entire region’s—air quality by the burning. The Valley already suffers from poor air quality, and those effects are felt especially keenly in poorer communities like Springfield. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has named the city an “Environmental Justice Community,” a designation that allows it to qualify for grants “to improve environmental conditions in underserved communities.” Among the city’s major health concerns, according to the EPA, are “poor air quality (point [and] mobile sources), home indoor air quality, lead, hazardous waste, pesticides and drinking, surface and ground water.”
One measure of the city’s health problems: its strikingly high asthma rates. According to the Pioneer Valley Asthma Coalition, 20 percent of the city’s schoolchildren suffer from asthma, about double the rate statewide. In a letter opposing the PRE plant, physician Matthew Sadof, chairman of the PVAC, wrote, “Springfield is a designated environmental justice community and its poor air quality has already been linked to these high asthma rates. This plant will place community members at even higher risk.”
In 2008, the City Council approved a land-use special permit for the PRE plant. Opponents of the project have urged the Council to revoke that permit, or to require the developers to apply for a new permit, in light of changes made to the first proposal (namely, the change from construction and demolition waste to wood chips as the fuel source).
The city Law Department has repeatedly maintained that the Council does not have the legal authority to revoke the permit or require a new one, and would risk a lawsuit from the developers if it did so. With that route now an apparent dead end, opponents of the project have turned their attention to the Public Health Council.
Markey told the Advocate that under state law the PHC can review the project proposal, hold public hearings, hire experts to give their opinions on its potential health effects—and, ultimately, deny or grant the project a site assignment. He also said he believes the city can charge the developers for the cost of the review. (Markey was a member of the City Council in 2008, and was one of only two members who voted against granting PRE its special permit.)
In a letter to the Public Health Council, Elizabeth Lederman of STIS wrote that the group is “the one, local body that can do what the state has decided not to do—truly assess what a new source of pollution will do to local residents suffering already from unacceptable air. The PHC is not bound, like the state, to use generically applied averages in assessing pollution and can concentrate on our local pollution and how it affects the local population.”
In 2008, to the great dismay of plant opponents, state officials waived a requirement that an environmental impact report on the project be conducted. Last year, Ian Bowles, then secretary of the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, reiterated that position. STIS has submitted a petition to Richard Sullivan, the former Westfield mayor who has since replaced Bowles in the EOEEA post, asking him to overturn that decision.
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The Public Health Council is made up of 15 members, including physicians and other health care professionals, members of the public, and the city’s director of health and human services, Helen Caulton-Harris.
After last week’s PHC meeting, Caulton-Harris told the Advocate that the group will request that an independent counsel be hired to advise it on what it is legally authorized to do. The PHC would like an opinion from outside of the city Law Department, she said, not because its members lack confidence in City Solicitor Ed Pikula or his staff, but rather because there have been conflicting legal interpretations offered, and the PHC would like to have the advice of an independent entity.
While the PHC has been following the matter closely, Caulton-Harris said, because a health impact assessment has not been done, the group cannot say what the effects of the project might be. “The Public Health Council, at this point, does not have all the information it needs to make an informed decision,” she said.
The plant proposal did not come before the PHC prior to the 2008 special permit vote. In 2009, health council members, in response to concerns raised by residents and health professionals, held public hearings on the project. Earlier this year, Tim Allen, who chaired the health council at the time (he resigned that post after being elected city councilor for Ward 7), told the Advocate that the feedback from those hearings made it clear that the public wanted the project to undergo health and safety reviews before it moved forward—something, he said, that PHC members were assured would happen.
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The PRE plant does face at least one more state review: it needs to get an air-quality permit from the Mass. Department of Environmental Protection.
Earlier this month, the DEP issued a draft permit for the project; the agency is now conducting a 30-day public comment period on the permit. That public comment period ends on April 9. On Tuesday, April 5, DEP will hold a hearing on the permit at 6:30 p.m. at Springfield’s Duggan Middle School.
In addition, City Councilors Tim Allen and Tommy Ashe—chairs, respectively, of the planning and economic development and public health and safety committees—have scheduled a joint meeting on the plant for Thursday, March 24, at 4:30 p.m. at City Hall. On the agenda: an assessment of the developers’ plans conducted by Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, an engineering and planning firm hired by the city, as well as an update “on [the] entire review process including: city process, state process and Air Quality review process.”
Mayor Domenic Sarno has given what he calls “conditional support” to the PRE project. Earlier this year, in response to an inquiry from the Advocate, the mayor issued this statement: “My conditional support has been and continues to be contingent on the proposed facility meeting all stringent federal, state and local environmental, health and safety requirements. My Administration will continue to give conditional support to the proposed biomass plant in the City of Springfield because it will assist with the creation of new jobs and tax revenues for the City. The City will continue to review any and all information regarding the proposed facility as the process moves forward and will evaluate the information accordingly.”
City Council President Jose Tosado, who is challenging Sarno in this fall’s mayoral race, voted for the 2008 special permit but has since changed his position, in light, he says, of new information that’s emerged about the plant’s potential effects. “We have so much more information available now that in good conscience, it’s not something I can support at this point,” Tosado told the Advocate in January.
