On Tuesday, the Massachusetts House and Senate Committees on Ways and Means jointly announced a transportation finance framework. Upon close review, there is more (or really less) to the supposedly budget-minded proposal than meets the eye. In short, the legislature’s answer to MassDOT’s ten-year transportation plan would neither be big enough (it does not even attempt to close the one billion dollar revenue gap), nor long enough (only five years) to meet the Commonwealth’s fundamental transportation needs. The framework would not cover the maintenance of our transportation system, nor keep it in a state of good repair, let alone allow for any investment in modernization. This would leave the entire transportation system vulnerable, staunching economic opportunity by locking in another five years of chronic underfunding for transportation. And rather than read more…

A few weeks ago my colleague Peter Shelley stood in front of fishermen and policymakers and spoke about the startling decline of New England’s cod fishery. Did you know that, since 1982, it’s estimated we have lost more than 80% of the cod in New England’s ocean? That surely should be a wake up call to us all. That day, Peter’s argument was simple, and backed by sound science. We must act quickly, he argued, to prevent the Atlantic cod – New England’s most iconic fish — from complete and utter collapse. The response? Hisses and boos. Hisses and boos. Peter is no fool – he knew what was coming. A fisheries expert who filed the first lawsuit that led to the cleanup of Boston Harbor, Peter has heard this read more…

Shark! OK – not until the third paragraph, but I want you to stay with me[i]. The second meeting of our first-in-the-nation coastal and ocean Regional Planning Body is happening in a couple of weeks, and the goal is to set some goals for regional ocean planning. This may sound like a wonky, best-left-to-professionals sort of affair, but we beg to differ. Bear with me, and maybe I can convince you that this is worth paying attention to. As established by the National Ocean Policy, the Regional Planning Body (RPB) consists of representatives from federal and state agencies, regional tribes, the New England Fishery Management Council, and an ex officio member from Canada. The RPB was brought together to design the process for the first regional ocean plan to be read more…

Northeast Utilities (NU) tells investors and the public that it is will announce a new northernmost route for its Northern Pass transmission project by a certain date. The date arrives. A “project update” appears on the website of NU subsidiary and project developer Northern Pass Transmission LLC, saying that it isn’t ready to announce the new route just yet. Sound familiar? It happened at the end of 2012. As reported in the Caledonian Record, it happened again last week, a mere month after NU said – in writing to investors and the Securities and Exchange Commission – that it would announce a new route by the end of March. This is the fourth self-imposed deadline that Northern Pass’s developer has failed to meet since last summer. You’d be forgiven if read more…

After a full day of vigorous testimony (including supportive testimony from CLF) on March 25, Maine’s Marine Resources Committee today unanimously voted that LD 72, a bill that will reopen the St. Croix River to alewives, ought to pass. This is an excellent outcome. With that strong recommendation, the bill will soon go to the full Legislature for a vote. If passed, LD 72 will reverse the law on the books since 1995 that has closed the fish ladder at the Grand Falls Dam  to alewives, preventing them from reaching their spawning grounds. Originally justified by a mistaken belief that alewives competed with smallmouth bass and caused a decline in their population, numerous scientific studies since then debunked that myth. But in the intervening years, the alewife population has shrunken to the read more…

CLF and affected community residents will be back in Court on April 11th arguing that the high-level biocontainment laboratory proposed by Boston University (BU) has no place in the densely populated urban environmental justice community of Roxbury/ South End. Please join us in standing up for this important cause by attending the hearing in Boston on April 11th. As we reported last year, having failed twice before, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and BU have attempted for the third time to adequately explain how the risks associated with placing a high-level biocontainment laboratory (the “Biolab”) that would test pathogens like ebola and the plague are acceptable for an urban environmental justice community. NIH released its latest Risk Assessment in July 2012. For the third time, that Risk Assessment does not meaningfully address read more…

Does it seem as though your car is hitting nasty potholes with ever-increasing frequency? That’s because it probably is. read more..

This week on Talking Fish, NOAA's action to open groundfish closed areas is deeply inconsistent with its own climate adaptation strategy; in Fish Talk in the News, NOAA releases proposed catch limits for the 2013 fishing year and fishermen and scientists discuss Cape Cod's gray seal problem. read more..

Two weeks ago, I wrote about bringing backyard chickens back to Rhode Island and paid special attention to the ongoing effort to repeal Woonsocket’s chicken ban. A few days later, the Washington Post ran a feature-length article on low-income Woonsocket residents’ struggles to feed their families. My last post focused on the ways that historical justifications for chicken bans have become outdated, and also noted some health and environmental benefits of backyard chickens. The Post article casts the Woonsocket chicken issue in a new light: Woonsocket suffers from food insecurity, and backyard chickens can help. The Post article is worth your time to read (here’s another link to it), but here are a few important takeaways: Every month, the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) injects $2 million in benefits read more…

If you have ever tried to get from one place to another in the Bay State, you could get the impression that everyone in Massachusetts must have a car. If you’ve ever tried to ride your bike across the Longfellow Bridge (as currently configured), or walk around Agawam, you know what I’m talking about. read more..