Theft of local power forces new anti-incinerator strategy

Last week, with little fanfare, Gov. Patrick signed into law the Permit Extension Act, which gives an automatic two-year extension to virtually every municipal and state permit filed for the last two years.

The rationale for this law is that given the economic downturn, new enterprises which are struggling to find start-up funds should not have to redo the permit process while they put their financing together.  A worthy goal, yes?  But what does this loss of local power mean in practical terms?

In Springfield MA, those of us who've been fighting Palmer Renewable Energy's proposal for an energy and toxic air-producing incinerator have been looking forward to the expiration of its land use permit.  PRE would have had to go back before City Council to seek a good faith extension before October 15, 2010, and we've been telling City Council not to renew their permit.  Now councilors don't have to make that tough decision, because the state has made it for them.

So what's next?  We are now asking City Council to REVOKE PRE's permit for good cause.  We want City Council to hold a public hearing to explore grounds for revocation.

I've already heard from a few city councilors who seem nervous about this idea.  Is it because we're asking them to do something they actually have the power to do?  And just what constitutes "good cause?"

Well, let's have the hearing and find out!  As far as I'm concerned, any proposal that plans to add a ton of lead to the city's air should never have been granted a permit in the first place.

Stop Toxic Incineration in Springfield has already collected more than 1,000 postcards to our city councilors demanding a public hearing to consider revocation.  Tomorrow at 11 a.m., we'll be on the steps of City Hall for  press conference-- and then we'll deliver our postcards to the City Council office. Come on down and join us.  Want some postcards for your neighborhood or civic organization?  all 413 734-4948 and we'll be happy to get them to you.

Mystery tire tracks, bureaucracy, pizza and outreach

I spent almost all of today on the telephone, but tonight I got to hang out with flesh and blood people and talk about community outreach.

The City of Springfield's 311 Call Center has been promoted as a helpmeet to the city's residents, but I have not warmed up to it. Sometimes It feels as if its main role is to protect city employees from having to deal with the public. When I'm calling a city department, it's usually because...hmm, let me see....oh, yes, it's because I want to talk to somebody in that department, not someone at the call center.

I called Helen Caulton-Harris at the Health and Human Services Department to see if she'd received the letter detailing the health risks of the wood-burning plant proposed for Springfield by Palmer Renewal Energy and got right through (to her voicemail, anyway).

I called the Election Office about a voter list and, as usual, was treated with friendliness and efficiency.

But getting through to the Department of Public Works to follow up on the tire tracks all over the neighborhood was a different story, one I won't bother to go into here, because I've already had my say to a call center supervisor and don't feel like getting anybody in trouble. Well, maybe I do-- but I won't, because my main goal was to find out how it happened that a DPW solid waste truck marked up so many streets in my neighborhood.

(However, seeing as I've made what appear to be anti-worker statements in my last two posts, let me just add that yeah, I may understand the surliness of workers in underpaid or job-insecure positions, but I don't excuse it. I've had my fair share of menial jobs in my working life, and they are only bearable by being the best human and doing the best job that you can.)

I'd posted a link to my DPW blog post on our local Springfield online forum, and had some interesting comments, one in particular by either a DPW worker or someone close to one. This person pointed to cutbacks in both drivers and mechanics, and talked about threats to employee and public safety.

Fellow blogger Mark Alamed, who writes the exquisite Exploring Western Massachusetts, emailed me a different idea.

The marks are caused by the driver setting the air brakes while the truck is still rolling. It's about the same as if you were setting your car's emergency brake while the vehicle was still in motion. With frequent stops, drivers are too impatient to let the vehicle roll to a complete stop before pulling the brake.

I work on many local town and city vehicles and this occurrence isn't exclusive to Springfield. In fact, at my shop we designed a special "wrapper" spring leaf because of how often the rear spring "eyes" of recycling trucks were snapping due to this driving style. It takes some torque to snap 3" wide, .447 thick spring steel. When both "eyes" break, the vehicle has to be towed to a repair shop, adding to the repair expense. The wrapper leaves generally eliminate this issue and the vehicle can still be driven to a garage even with broken spring "eyes."

Unfortunately, from my experience, chances are slim that this practice of pulling the air brake prematurely will be corrected.

I did eventually talk to two very nice people at DPW, one of whom will talk to the driver of the truck assigned to my neighborhood to see if he can figure out what happened and how it can not happen again. Will I ever find out? I don't know.

More calls, until I thought my arm would fall off:
-- I called the guy in the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs who'd told me that the work of the analyst who reviewed the environmental certificate for the biomass plant had been reviewed by a second person to tell him that that person knew nothing about it and had not been involved in the review.
-- I called the office of the Secretary Ian Bowles, EOEEA, to see if I could get a copy of the report on the environmental justice policy that he was supposed to deliver to the Legislature on January 1st of this year.
-- I called a reporter to see if I could get her interested in a substantial story on Palmer's proposed plant but found out that she has a conflict of interest-- wonder what it is?

Finally, I went over to Arise to do the second half of the ward representation outreach training and got to eat pizza with down to earth people. Now I'm home with my cats and the History Channel-- did aliens really help provide the technical information to ancient cultures to build the pyramids? And tomorrow is another day.

Springfield biomass plant opponents have a website

People who want more information on the proposed Palmer Renewable Energy (PRE) biomass plant now have a resource: Say No to Springfield Construction and Demolition Debris Incineration. Blogging I can do, but website creation is beyond me, so thanks to the Warner family for pulling this off.

Some more anti-PRE info: The next general meeting of folks who want to stop this plant will be next Wednesday, September 30, 6 pm. at Arise, 467 State St. in Springfield. This will be a good meeting for new people, so please join us. An organizer from the Toxics Action Center in Boston will be coming to help us think through some of our next steps.

The Mass. Dept. of Environmental Protection will have an Air Quality hearing on this plant probably before the end of the year. Keep checking back and as soon as a date is set, you'll know. Springfield residents really need to turn out for this hearing. Excuse my stating the obvious, but how can it possibly be good for us to add "only" a ton of lead, plus arsenic, chromium, dioxin and fine particulate matter and more to the air we breathe?

Signatures are now being collected to get a question on next year's state ballot which would remove the designation of wood-burning biomass as green. Petitions are available to sign at Arise, and if you want to take a petition with you to collect even more signatures, you can. You can find out more about this effort at Stop Spewing Carbon!

There's a lot more to say about PRE, biomass, organizing, etc-- it's a good part of the reason I haven't been blogging as much as usual, which I hope to remedy soon.

Photo from NIOSH's photostream at Flickr.

Huh?

Regarding Palmer Paving's proposed biomass plant.....just found out that the DEP issues a draft permit FIRST and THEN has an Air Quality hearing...still trying to find out the date of that hearing. The fellow I did speak to, expressing concern about the CO2 levels the plant will emit (seeing as we banned incinerator burning nearly twenty years ago) said it's a societal issue, a trade-off for our need for electricity...and I was glad to be able to counter the the combined five plants will only provide one percent of Massachusett's needs!