"An Expanded Environmental Notification Form (EENF) has been submitted to the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) Office for this project. The project requires a Mandatory Environmental Impact Report (EIR). The Proponent is requesting a Single EIR in lieu of the 2-stage Draft EIR and Final EIR. The project is within the Designated Geographic Area of several Environmental Justice (EJ) populations. The first several pages can be viewed from the Environmental Monitor. The EENF indicates that the project meets or exceeds the following review thresholds: Direct alteration of 50 or more acres of land; Alteration of one or more acres of bordering vegetating wetlands and alteration of ten or more acres of any other wetlands. An online/remote consultation session site visit will be held to receive advice and comments from agencies, officials, and citizens regarding which environmental issues, if any, are significant for this project. Opinions as to the extent and significance of possible environmental impact will be welcome. PLEASE NOTE THAT AN IN-PERSON SITE VISIT MAY BE HELD BASED ON AGENCY AND STAKEHOLDER RVSPS." Read More

"Since buying out Columbia Gas’ Massachusetts assets after the Merrimack Valley disaster, Eversource has taken over their planned 'Western Mass Reliability Project'. This includes constructing a new 'point of delivery' (POD) meter station in Longmeadow and installing a new pipeline gas main between this new POD station and Eversource’s Bliss Street Regulator Station in Springfield. The pipeline is planned to be 16″ in diameter, running at 200 psi. It’s 5.3 mile length means it needs to go through multiple permitting processes, including MEPA, EFSB and DPU. [...] After a long stall, they have just filed with MEPA and will soon file with the Energy Facilities Siting Board to permit and launch this project. See the MEPA filing. There are MEPA site visits coming up on June 21st, both in person at the Longmeadow POD meter station site and virtual later that evening." Read More

"Two state senators are taking the Baker administration to task for broken electric vehicle chargers along the Massachusetts Turnpike. As the Globe reported in April, two of the six chargers installed at rest stops along the 138-mile highway — in Natick and the westbound Charlton stop — have been out of service for over a year. EVgo, the company that operated the chargers, withdrew all six charger locations from its listings and said it could not repair the problems on its own. On Monday, in a letter to Secretary of Transportation Jamey Tesler, state Senators Cynthia Creem and Michael Barrett demanded that the broken chargers be fixed by July 1 and asked for information about who was responsible for their operation and maintenance. [...] Last year’s massive federal infrastructure funding bill included $5 billion nationwide for improving charging networks. Massachusetts is in the process of applying for its share of the funds, which will total about $12 million per year for five years, Katherine Fichter, assistant secretary and chief of climate and decarbonization at MassDOT, said on Tuesday at a seminar sponsored by AAA. The funds ultimately could be used to build 20 high-speed charging stops, each with at least four chargers, she said. The state will require contractors to maintain chargers built under the program to avoid outages as much as possible, Fichter said, adding that the issue is a challenging one. [...] Last year’s massive federal infrastructure funding bill included $5 billion nationwide for improving charging networks. Massachusetts is in the process of applying for its share of the funds, which will total about $12 million per year for five years, Katherine Fichter, assistant secretary and chief of climate and decarbonization at MassDOT, said on Tuesday at a seminar sponsored by AAA. The funds ultimately could be used to build 20 high-speed charging stops, each with at least four chargers, she said. The state will require contractors to maintain chargers built under the program to avoid outages as much as possible, Fichter said, adding that the issue is a challenging one." Read More

"In 2015, exposés by InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times confirmed that oil giant ExxonMobil knew by the late 1970s that climate change caused by human activities would be devastating if left unchecked. It also knew that its products were the major cause of the pending crisis. [...] CLF started our own investigation, focused on how this climate deceit has affected us here in New England. We found that despite knowing the harm the climate crisis could cause, ExxonMobil left its oil storage facility in Everett, Massachusetts, on the Mystic River vulnerable to flooding from storms and rising seas. That meant it was just a matter of time before a giant storm flooded our streets with a toxic soup from Exxon’s dilapidated facilities.

In an effort to finally hold ExxonMobil accountable for its climate deceit, gross negligence, and violations of federal pollution regulations, in the fall of 2016, CLF filed suit against the corporate giant. [...] This case was a David vs. Goliath scenario, in every sense of the term. The residents impacted by Exxon’s pollution are already at a disadvantage: lower-income, immigrant, and communities of color like those along the Mystic have traditionally been denied the same access to resources as their wealthier counterparts and disproportionately over-burdened with pollution. [...] Despite ExxonMobil attempting to have our case dismissed and blocking its progress through the courts for more than five years, we refused to back down. [...] The case – and our tenacity – has now shut the facility down for good. The sale of the property to a developer is a welcome victory for the community, the Mystic River, and our environment. [...] Even though the company has shut down the tank farm and has agreed to sell the site, the danger has unfortunately not passed. The Everett site contains contaminated soil and groundwater, and it will continue to pose a serious threat to the community and the environment until Exxon or the purchaser takes responsibility to fortify it." Read More  

"...the New York Assembly voted 145-1 on Friday afternoon to pass Assembly Bill A7006B, The Digital Fair Repair Act. In doing so, New York became the first state legislature in the nation to enact a right to repair consumer electronics, after the state’s Senate passed S4104A, an identical bill, on Thursday. This is a milestone - the culmination of years of work by right-to-repair advocates who, previously, had seen more than 100 pieces of legislation killed off, typically in closed committee sessions under heavy lobbying from high-tech firms like Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Google and others. But not this time. With the backing of NYPIRG, the state chapter of the Public Interest Research Group and the Repair Coalition, working with sponsors NY Assembly member Patricia Fahy and State Senator Neil Breslin’s shepherded the Fair Repair Act through committees and to the floors of the Assembly and Senate for a vote. In addition to the 145-1 slam dunk, the Senate bill passed 59-4, both 'veto-proof' majorities with both measures winning solid Democratic and Republican support." Read More

"Ithaca, New York, made headlines last year when its city council voted to fully decarbonize. Achieving the 2030 goal will require grid decarbonization, electrifying transportation and rolling out heat pumps to the city’s 6,000 aging commercial and residential buildings. [...] About 40% of Ithaca homes are more than 100 years old, and the city says a full retrofit of every building could cost $600 million. So how can a city with about 30,000 residents and projected revenues of around $80 million finance such an ambitious project? Installing heat pumps and making other efficiency improvements makes financial sense for some buildings: the energy savings will pay for the improvements. Other projects may be close, or simply not pencil out. Either way, the savings accrue slowly. So in order to get all buildings decarbonized, the city aggregated blocks of buildings to manage project risk, and then securitized the project to attract private capital. [...] The program is essentially a way of covering the upfront costs of making building improvements and turning it into 'electrification as a service,' he explained, resulting in long-term leasing or long-term lending at a low interest. [...] Ithaca has annual emissions of about 400,000 metric tons of CO2, with about 40% from buildings, 40% from transportation and 20% from waste and other sources, said Aguirre-Torres. A 2021 energy code will soon ban new gas hookups in Ithaca building construction, 'so my job was the easy one,' Aguirre-Torres joked: to figure out how to make existing buildings carbon-free." Read More