While much of Boston was distracted by the approaching holidays, public health and the environmental justice communities of Roxbury / South End scored a victory last Friday, December 23rd, when Secretary Sullivan issued his final decision to deny BU’s request to begin high level research at BU’s National Emerging Infectious Disease Laboratories (NEIDL) until a full risk assessment is reviewed by EOEEA. read more..

Last week brought a fitting capstone to the botched year-long rollout of the Northern Pass project. In a disturbing turn of events, the project developers sought to scuttle a historic plan to preserve a storied wilderness in New Hampshire’s North Country. Their attempt failed, but what the episode says about their future tactics is anything but encouraging for New Hampshire and the region. read more..

A truly gorgeous summer day sailing around Block Island at hull speed is one of my fondest ocean memories. So is battling with a monster striper around midnight on the rocks of Cuttyhunk Island. (Landed and released.) I’ve also been lucky to enjoy any number of days on Buzzard’s Bay either cranking off the miles in a kayak, watching my small daughter catch her first porgie or diving off the fish dock deep into the cool, clean, green water. I can’t think for a minute what deep shock and dread I’d feel if we had a truly disastrous oil spill such as happened with BP’s Deepwater Horizon. The 2003 spill from a barge collision in Buzzard’s Bay released at least 98,000 gallons of heavy fuel oil and those impacts were astonishing. Imagine the damage from read more…

Our systems for creating, conveying and using energy are full of nooks, crannies, odd corners and unexpected cul-de-sacs. The wholesale electricity system that includes large generators and the wires and associated hardware that moves power to the local distribution system where energy is transmitted to homes, offices, factories, streetlights and your cell phone charger is a great example of this reality.  However, the regulatory system we have developed over the last 15 years means that much of the information about that system is available online with some notable exceptions like specific maps, apparently on the theory that terrorists would have trouble finding massive power plants and giant transmission towers if they only had Google Earth and their eyes to guide them. One such odd corner is the fact that the read more…

There’s a common saying that if you can’t measure it, you can’t control it. Leaders of Boston University’s proposed National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) – known as the BU Biolab – in the densely populated urban Environmental Justice community of Roxbury/ South End, have asked the state to waive required review of their plans to build a lab involving rare and lethal pathogens even though their prior risk assessments were found inadequate multiple times. In other words, they want to build a risk laden facility without accountability to the public. We oppose the grant of this request. read more..

That’s why today’s ruling from the EPA on the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) is so laudable. As my colleague N Jonathan Peress said in a press statement, these standards “amount to one of the most significant public health and environmental measures in years.” They are also similar to standards we adopted here in New England years ago. read more..

With the Northern Pass project on the table, as well as other looming projects and initiatives to increase New England’s imports of Canadian hydroelectric power, the region’s energy future is coming to a crossroads. The choice to rely on new imports will have consequences that endure for decades, so it’s critical the region use the best possible data and analysis to weigh the public costs and benefits of going down this road. To date, there have been almost no objective, professional assessments of the ramifications. Today, CLF is making available to the public a technical report prepared by Synapse Energy Economics addressing a crucial issue: the potential effects of new imports on the region’s own renewable power industry.  The report, Renewable Portfolio Standards and Requirements (PDF), explains how the Renewable read more…

It would be hard to find “a tougher moment over the last 40 years to be a leader in the American environmental movement” only if your sole focus is the national debate. All the rest of us — at the local, state and regional levels — have known for years what the nationals are only now realizing: we’ve got to engage people closer to where they live. read more..

A roundup of the stories that appeared this week on TalkingFish.org, CLF's blog devoted to providing insight into the scientific, economic and social aspects at work in New England's fisheries. read more..

An incisive and clear essay by Peter Rothstein, President of the New England Clean Energy Council (NECEC), published on the Commonwealth Magazine website makes powerful and accurate points about the benefits of clean energy to the regional economy.  His analysis and arguments are deeply consistent with the points that CLF’s Jonathan Peress made in a recent entry on this blog outlining the benefits of the investments generated by the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) documented in a study by the Analysis Group. Unlike the attacks on the clean energy programs that he is responding to, Rothstein backs his assertions up with facts and figures. Here is a long quotation from his essay: Clean energy investments have many positive benefits, making our energy infrastructure more efficient and sustainable and while growing read more…