"...Town voters have approved a Planning Board bylaw amendment guaranteeing that the general public can visit open space and conservation land such as Berkshire Natural Resource Council’s Hollow Fields and other 5-acre plus properties in town by right for recreation, education and research, subject to landowners’ permission. The annual town meeting vote on Wednesday night was 233-62, well over the two-thirds supermajority needed for passage. Nearly 25 percent of registered voters participated. A competing amendment by three families who live near Hollow Fields went down to defeat by 207 to 35. It would have required special permits for general public access to publicly promoted and advertised open space preserves. The Planning Board’s amendment was based on fallout from efforts by adjacent residents on Perry’s Peak Road to limit access to the 600-acre Hollow Fields Preserve, which was heavily used during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. After the town’s Zoning Board of Appeals voted to require a special permit for public use of the site, the BNRC filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts Land Court against the zoning board. The neighborhood group then joined the suit. Last year, a judge imposed limits on Hollow Fields, including a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekday restriction, pending a town meeting decision. [...] After nearly all residents voice-voted to end the debate and proceed to a decision, secret balloting yielded the landslide approval of the Planning Board’s by-right bylaw amendment. Representing the three families proposing their own version of the amendment, attorney Matthew Mozian emphasized that his clients had no desire to stop hiking at Hollow Fields, but to continue it with some restrictions. 'Open space is a great use, it’s wonderful … but there are particular areas where friction is caused, where you have a great use that adds a detrimental character to the neighborhood,' said Mozian. But, as he described the residents’ amendment, 'if the landowner promotes or advertises by any means or medium to the general public the recreational use, they need a special permit.' Mozian contended that one special permit per property for an unlimited time would suffice, but acknowledged the amendment would keep the general public — 'people you don’t know' — from using areas like Hollow Fields and give the town 'a seat at a table and give abutters some rights as stakeholders in this town.' But residents disagreed, voting down the neighborhood group’s proposal by an 85 percent margin." Read More

"In New England, if you don’t live on the coast or in a couple of inland locations, you will probably only see Double-crested Cormorants as they pass through during migration. At first sight, these birds aren’t especially eye-catching – blackish-brown, somewhat prehistoric-looking, often seen perched with wings stretched out to dry. Hardly worth a second look, some might say, but in the spring they would be mistaken. During their breeding season, Double-crested Cormorants’ eyes are a brilliant turquoise color, and they develop the tufts of feathers, or crests, on their head for which they are named. Should you see one in the spring, watch for it to open its beak – the inside of their mouth is also bright turquoise at this time of year!" Read More

"A controversial rule that makes it harder for renewable energy projects to participate in one of New England’s lucrative electricity markets will remain in place for another two years.

Late Friday night, Federal energy regulators approved a plan from the regional grid operator, ISO New England, to keep the so-called minimum offer price rule — or MOPR (pronounced MOPE-er) — until 2025. The MOPR dictates a price floor below which new power sources cannot bid in the annual forward capacity market — a sort of futures market for power plants promising to be 'on call' and ready to produce electricity when demand spikes. The grid operator holds this annual on-call auction to lock in the power capacity it thinks the region will need three years in the future. Power generators that won a spot in the 2022 auction, for example, are on stand-by beginning in 2025. By keeping the MOPR around longer, Melissa Birchard of the Acadia Center says it will be harder for the New England states to meet their decarbonization goals." Read More

"The European Parliament’s Environment Committee this week made strong, but nonbinding, recommendations to put a brake on the EU’s total commitment to burning forest biomass to produce energy. While environmentalists cautiously hailed the decision, the forestry industry condemned it. [...] A key recommendation urges that primary woody biomass (that is made from whole trees) to produce energy and heat no longer receive government subsidies under the EU’s revised Renewable Energy Directive (RED). [...] Another recommendation called for primary woody biomass to no longer be counted toward EU member states’ renewable energy targets. Currently, biomass accounts for 60% of the EU’s renewable energy portfolio, far more than zero-carbon wind and solar. [...] The Environment Committee recommendations mark the first time any part of the EU government has questioned the aggressive use of biomass by the EU to meet its Paris Agreement goals. A final decision by the EU on its biomass burning policies is expected in September as part of its revised Renewable Energy Directive." Read More

"Central Berkshire Habitat for Humanity (CBHFH) and Berkshire Bank are proud to announce plans for the 2022 Westside Xtraordinary Day this June 8, a day dedicated to community revitalization and volunteerism in the Westside neighborhood of Pittsfield. [...] Berkshire Bank’s Xtraordinary Day (X-Day) is held across five states – MA, NY, VT, CT, and RI, with branches and offices closing from 12pm - 4pm on June 8 for concurrent day of community service events. In Pittsfield, the day brings together approximately 200 volunteers from Berkshire Bank to work alongside Westside neighbors, and Habitat for Humanity staff and volunteers as part of a day of service. Homeowners and renters within a concentrated work area benefit from a variety of home repair and landscaping options such as fence repair, small painting projects, power-washing, and application of house numbers. Some residents have opted to receive elevated garden planters with floral and vegetable plantings. Ultimately, the whole neighborhood benefits from this event with an increased sense of community and pride of ownership." Read More  

"A Cape Cod science center and one of the world’s largest shipping businesses are collaborating on a project to use robotic buoys to protect a vanishing whale from lethal collisions with ships. A lab at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution developed the technology, which uses buoys and underwater gliders to record whale sounds in near real time. The robotic recorders give scientists, mariners and the public an idea of the location of rare North Atlantic right whales, said Mark Baumgartner, a marine ecologist with Woods Hole whose lab also operates the buoys. The whales number less than 340 in the world and ship strikes are one of the biggest threats to their existence, as they travel through some of the busiest stretches of ocean on the planet. Now, French shipping giant CMA CGM is working with Woods Hole to deploy two of the robotic buoys off of Norfolk, Virginia, and Savannah, Georgia. [...] CMA CGM is funding the deployment of the buoys, which will add to the data collected by six others off the East Coast, Baumgartner said. The two new buoys could be deployed for testing soon, he said. [...] The whales were once abundant off the East Coast, but their populations were decimated generations ago by commercial whaling. These days, they're vulnerable to ship collisions and entanglement in fishing gear. And they've dwindled in population in recent years because of high mortality and poor reproduction. The whales are aided by a complex network of protected areas and shipping restrictions. However, scientists have sounded alarms recently that the whales have been straying outside of protected areas in search of food as waters warm. That has made them more vulnerable." Read More

"In a "mass action" demonstration with speakers, bikers, kayakers and even kites, protestors converged on the Water Street bridge between Peabody and Danvers on Thursday to further their opposition to a new peaker plant being built off Peabody's Pulaksi Street, where two power plants already exist on a riverfront site. The new plant, which has received all necessary approvals from the state and been green-lighted for construction, would be located within an environmental justice neighborhood, a state designation given to areas where residents are historically vulnerable to environmental hazards. The new plant, which has received all necessary approvals from the state and been green-lighted for construction, would be located within an environmental justice neighborhood, a state designation given to areas where residents are historically vulnerable to environmental hazards. [...] The situation in Peabody has taken center stage for climate activists in Massachusetts, which by law is now required to cut its emissions in half by 2030, and then reach net zero by 2050. Opponents feel building a natural gas and oil-fired power plant at this stage in the game is completely contradictory to those efforts. [...] The entire project is estimated to cost $85 million. Municipal light plants in 14 communities have already put up money and signed 30-year contracts to receive power from the peaker plant, including Peabody, Marblehead, Wakefield, Hull, Mansfield, Shrewsbury, Sterling, Boylston, West Boylston, Holden, Holyoke, Chicopee, South Hadley and Russell. Holyoke and Chicopee have since backed out of their contracts, but have not been able to sell their shares. " Read More

"Do you pay for the water you use? The answer may seem like an obvious “yes”—you probably get a water bill every month, charging you a cent or two for every gallon that comes out of the taps in your home. In the U.S., an average family of four, consuming 100 gallons of water each per day, paid $73 a month for water in 2019 (accounting for wide variations across states and cities). But those dollar and gallon amounts are almost completely divorced from the true impact of our lives on the world’s water resources. For one thing, residential water prices in the U.S. are based largely on delivery costs—with utilities charging for the cost of getting water to you and not for the actual resource. More importantly, your residential water use represents only a tiny fraction of the water that goes into the products and infrastructure that make your life possible. Depending on where they operate, the businesses that use that water to make their products pay almost nothing for it, or they may pay only for the right to use a water source, not for the actual volume of water they use. When that indirect water use is taken into account, the average U.S. resident consumes nearly 2,000 gallons of water every day, according to estimates by water-monitoring campaign group the Water Footprint Network. 'We still operate the world economy with freshwater largely as a free resource,' says Johan Rockström, co-director of Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and a specialist in water resources. That doesn’t make sense, Rockström argues. A massive body of evidence, he explains, shows that this same global economy is disrupting the water cycle—through greenhouse gas emissions, the destruction of ecosystems, and pollution—and therefore making the essential resource increasingly scarce. 'We’re not factoring that into the economy, and therefore not into governance or management of water either. It’s a market failure.'" Read More