Michaelann Bewsee was feeling good the day after last week’s hearing of the Springfield Zoning Board of Appeals.
The previous evening, the ZBA had issued a much-welcomed ruling on one of the more contentious issues to hit the city in years: a proposal to build a wood-burning power plant in East Springfield.
Opponents of the plant argue that it would be an environmental and public health nightmare in a city that already suffers from poor air quality, elevated rates of childhood asthma and other health problems, and chronic social and economic disparities that leave poor people especially vulnerable.
The would-be developers, Palmer Renewable Energy, dispute charges that the plan poses health risks and point out that the project has already received several necessary government approvals.
Those approvals included—at least, until last week—building permits that PRE needed from the city to begin work on the plant. At its Jan. 25 meeting, the Zoning Board of Appeals heard an appeal filed by Bewsee, a member of the grassroots Stop Toxic Incineration in Springfield, and William and Toni Keefe, a couple who own a home adjacent to the proposed plant site, in which they contended that the permits were not legal because the City Council had revoked a special land use permit that had earlier been granted to the project. Without that permit in place, the opponents argued, the city’s Building Department could not legally grant the building permits.
In a unanimous vote, the ZBA agreed. While PRE can—and, it appears, will—appeal that decision, Bewsee, for one, is confident that the hard-won victory will stand.
“I think we’ve won the war, but there are probably a few battles left to come,” she said.
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One of those battles is the likely legal appeal of the ZBA decision.
Frank Fitzgerald, PRE’s Springfield attorney, has not returned multiple calls from the Advocate about the project. But last week, Fitzgerald told the Springfield Republican that his clients will appeal the ZBA ruling in Superior Court or Land Court.
“We believe that the ZBA has clearly erred in rendering this decision,” he said. “Given the facts and the law, we are confident that this ruling will be overturned on appeal and that [Building] Commissioner [Steven] Desilets’ well-founded decision will be reinstated.”
While the ZBA ruling addressed the appeal filed by Bewsee and the Keefes, the Springfield City Council has also played a major role in the fight. Indeed, the Council had filed its own appeal of the building permits, although the ZBA did not take up that appeal at last week’s meeting, having already granted the residents’ appeal.
The City Council’s decision to appeal the building permits marked a dramatic change from its initial stand on the plant. In 2008, the Council—which included only three of the 13 members now on the body—had actually granted PRE a special permit; only two councilors (Rosemarie Mazza Moriarty and Patrick Markey, an attorney who’s now working, pro bono, with plant opponents) voted against the permit.
But by last year, significant changes in the composition of the Council—which in 2010 expanded to 13 members, eight of them elected by ward—and mounting public opposition to the project prompted councilors to reverse course. Last May, the City Council voted, 10 to 2, to rescind the 2008 special permit, citing changes made to the proposed project since the first permit was granted.
The two “No” votes were cast by at-large Councilors Tim Rooke and Kateri Walsh, both of whom had voted to grant the permit in 2008. At-large councilor Jimmy Ferrera, who also supported the permit in 2008, was absent from the meeting where the revocation passed, but at a later meeting voted against the Council’s appeal of the building permit.
All three of those councilors have received multiple campaign contributions from members of the Callahan family, the PRE developers, and from their attorney, Fitzgerald, with Walsh and Ferrera raking in the largest totals. In 201l, Walsh received $1,750 from the Callahans and $750 from Fitzgerald. Ferrera received $1,700 from the family and $350 from the attorney. Rooke received $750 from the family; last year, he told the Advocate that his position on the project was based on his faith that the state will ensure that it’s safe, not on those donations.
Mayor Domenic Sarno—who has voiced “conditional” support of the plant, dependent on its receiving necessary approvals from the state—has received $4,275 from the Callahans since the fall of 2008. More than half of that—$2,250—was donated on Nov. 7, 2011, the day before Sarno won re-election over challenger José Tosado, a plant opponent. Sarno also received $750 in donations from Fitzgerald last year. He, too, has said those contributions have no bearing on his position.
Bewsee, who was also a leader in the campaign to bring ward representation to the City Council, credits that change for the Council’s change of heart on the PRE project. All eight of the ward councilors have sided with plant opponents, while only two at-large councilors—Tosado and Tommy Ashe—voted to revoke the 2008 special permit and to appeal the building permits. (Tosado left the Council to run for mayor; his seat has been filled by Bud Williams. Williams, who previously served for 16 years on the Council before stepping down to run, unsuccessfully, for mayor in 2009, voted for the special permit in 2008 and spoke in favor of the PRE project at a contentious City Council meeting last spring. Williams has received more than $2,000 in campaign donations from Callahan family members over the past several years.)
“It’s nice for me, personally, to see how our success on biomass is so closely connected to our success on ward representation,” Bewsee said. “Ward representation hasn’t fulfilled its full promise yet. But this has certainly showed that ward councilors are more responsive to the community than at-large councilors ever have been, and currently are.”
The fight over the PRE plant, Bewsee said, is “basically over. There are still some things to sort out, and I don’t want to be overly optimistic. But they can’t build without a building permit, they can’t build without a special permit, and hell will freeze over before they get a special permit from this City Council.”
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Among the still unresolved issues that Bewsee refers to is a citizens’ appeal of the air quality permit that was granted to PRE last year by the state Environmental Protection Agency.
Initially, a hearing officer working for the EPA had issued a report finding that the petitioners—who include Arise for Social Justice, the Conservation Law Foundation and the Toxics Action Center, as well as individual residents—did not have legal standing to challenge the air quality permit. But a few days later, Kenneth Kimmel, commissioner of the Mass. Department of Environmental Protection, rejected that recommendation.
Kimmel, who referred to the “recurring issue” of whether citizens have the legal right to appeal such a permit, found that the Springfield group should be granted “an opportunity to be heard.” A hearing is expected this spring.
The outcome of that appeal will have implications not just for the Springfield case, but for all residents fighting controversial biomass projects around the state. “Hopefully, [we’ll] have a chance to affect some state policy thinking,” Bewsee said.
“We’re building on a lot of good work,” she added, referring to the lessons she and fellow plant opponents learned by watching similar anti-biomass campaigns in Greenfield and Russell. “But I do think we’re blazing a trail also.”
Looking forward, Bewsee is eager to see Springfield develop a comprehensive approach to improving its public health and environment, including how it will handle proposed projects like PRE’s in the future. “I want to pursue the local aspect a little more,” she said. “What do we have to do to make sure this never happens to us again?”
And, she added, “What I’m really hoping is that we’re just making it really clear that biomass is just not viable for Massachusetts, and that people will fight it.”
