Suspicious of good news - will forests get a reprieve?

I spent a fair amount of yesterday morning on the phone, calling different public officials about the proposed biomass plant for Springfield, and none of them mentioned-- in fact, I doubt they knew-- that the state Department of Energy Resources plans to commission a study to determine if Massachusetts' forests are up to meeting the needs of the three proposed WMA biomass plants.

There's an article by Stan Freeman in today's Republican about the hearing. Apparently none of the other permit processes will be held up by this study.

Found a good article by local activist Mary Boothe that was in the Boston Globe last month, debunking the green energy label that's been slapped on biomass. (Let's add this to our lexicon of NewsSpeak.)

There's no study-- so far-- on the potential health imact of this plant. Just a few days before I went to the SASEA forum on Springfield's plant, one of Arise's members called to say she'd be late for a meeting because she was going to the funeral of her 32 year-old cousin, who'd died while having an asthma attack. I said to her later-- as I've said a few time recently-- that when I was in junior high, there was one girl who had asthma, and everybody knew her name, because nobody else in the school had asthma; it was an exotic and terrifying disease. Just look at us now-- Above 16% and climbing.