At the ceremony marking the completion of the Stormwater Storage Tunnel under South Boston Mayor Menino of Boston connected a couple of important dots and made a powerful case for how environmental protection and economic development and prosperity are allied efforts that support each other – not competing values where one must lose for the other to win.

The Mayor noted that the previous day he had been at the groundbreaking for the Vertex Pharmaceuticals headquarters at Fan Pier and stated his firm belief that a cutting edge, growing and successful business like Vertex would not be willing to make a long term commitment to the Boston waterfront if the hard work of cleaning up the harbor had not been undertaken and executed.  The Mayor was recalling the bad old days of raw sewage pouring and how the cleanup has changed Boston’s harbor from a liability into a major economic and social asset.

Obviously, we here at CLF completely agree with Mayor Menino on this essential point.

CLF has long believed that cleaning up Boston Harbor was an essential element in building a great city.  That belief, along with our commitment to addressing the ecological health of the Harbor and the larger marine and coastal environment has fueled our work on our (still pending !) lawsuit filed in 1983 and all the related activities that have swirled around that long running legal saga.

CLF also put a tremendous amount of time, particularly during the critical 1995 – 2003 period, into fighting to ensure that the development of Fan Pier and the larger area in which it sits (previously known as the South Boston Waterfront, the South Boston Seaport, the Seaport District and most recently the Innovation District) is developed in a smart way. We fought to ensure that development of this “new urban frontier” created access to all the citizens of the region by transit and foot, placing greenspace and great destinations on the waterfront and mixing together the public spaces mandated by law with housing and commercial development.  The development finally unfolding on the waterfront is guided by the infrastructure we fought to have in place and must follow the contours and mandates of the permits and rules that were negotiated.

The imperative of global warming pushes us all to live and work in efficient places where buildings consume as little energy as possible and it is easy and practical to walk to most destinations and there are affordable and available public transit options to many other places we need to go.  Nothing minimizes automobile travel, and the fuel consumption and emissions that come from car usage, like urban living and development.

Cleaning up the harbor and developing the Boston waterfront in a smart, human-scale but dense manner that creates great urban places  does indeed fire up the economic engine of Boston. As both Mayor Menino and EPA Regional Administrator Curt Spalding noted the other day in South Boston that urban economic engine of Boston powers so much of our region, so when we improve the environment and economy of Boston we are generating value, jobs and prosperity for New England.

The new storage tunnel will result in significantly cleaner water for beachgoers at Carson Beach in South Boston. Photo credit: bostonharborwalk.com

It’s been a busy day for South Boston on several fronts – but the dawning of a new era for a transformed Boston Harbor and the environmentalists, legislators and other officials who have been fighting for a clean harbor for nearly three decades. Today marks the opening of a massive sewage holding tank – called a CSO (combined sewer overflow) storage tunnel -  under South Boston that will store gallons of stormwater that would normally overwhelm the city’s sewer system and cause untreated sewage to be released into Boston Harbor. The change will make the beach “one of the cleanest in America” and bring the rate of beach closures down from eight per summer to one roughly every five years, according to this front page article in today’s Boston Globe.

It’s the gratifying ending to a story in which CLF has played a lead role since the beginning. Twenty-eight years ago, CLF filed one of the key lawsuits ordering that the harbor be cleaned up. Today, CLF’s Peter Shelley is one of the only original lawyers involved in the massive and long-running court case who has seen it through to fruition.  Key participants in this morning’s ribbon cutting ceremony for the new storage tunnel came on to the scene decades after the filing, in 1983, of the still-pending case that still bears the label Conservation Law Foundation vs. Metropolitan District Commission (the now-disbanded state agency that used to oversee the water and sewerage systems of Greater Boston).

The ceremony today reflected back on the long struggle to clean the harbor but, appropriately, also looked to the future.  Frederick Laskey, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA), the state authority created to execute on the massive harbor cleanup, spoke eloquently about the collaboration between governments, business the advocacy community and the neighborhoods that was needed to execute on a vision of a cleaner harbor and beaches. Laskey especially noted the courage of the representatives of the many municipalities in the Greater Boston region in accepting the regional nature of the project and the need to spread the cost of creating swimmable beaches and a clean harbor across the whole metropolitan area.

State Senator Jack Hart, Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs Richard Sullivan (who also serves as Chairman of the MWRA Board) and  Department of Conservation and Recreation Commissioner Edward Lambert echoed Laskey’s remarks, emphasizing the importance of community collaboration and the value of clean beaches.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Stearns, who today presides over CLF v. MDC and the continuing harbor cleanup, discussed the hard work needed to get to this day and offered a tribute to the vision of Judge David Mazzone, who had previously handled the case. In 2004, during his final illness in 2004, Mazzone handed the case over to Judge Stearns, conveying his belief that a CSO tunnel was needed and “could be completed by May 2011” for the cost of less than $250 million (in this morning’s speech, Stearns noted that the project came in right on that schedule and in fact under the initial cost estimate).

EPA Regional Administrator Curt Spalding spoke about the difficulty of executing on a project of this magnitude and the importance of core environmental laws like the Clean Water Act, which he proudly noted was championed by another Rhode Islander, Senator John Chafee, that provided clear direction regarding our national policy and the need to create clean and swimmable waters.

Thanks to the tenacity of CLF and others, today’s parents don’t have to worry that a day at the beach could make their children sick, and a new generation of kids won’t have beach closings put a damper on their summer days. But our work is nowhere near complete.  Yes, we need to continue to ensure that the right infrastructure, like this CSO structure in South Boston, is in place to treat our stormwater appropriately. But even more importantly we need to build and manage our buildings, our land and our roads in a way that recaptures as much rain water as possible.  We need to treat rain and snow as the precious resources that they are, moving away from a view that these gifts from above are a waste product that needs to be treated and shunted off into the sea. With those notions in mind, Massachusetts will continue to set an example for the region and the nation of the right way to restore a precious community resource and iconic piece of New England’s history.

Do you love the Earth? Fantastic concerts? Free stuff? Learning about the awesome work of your friendly neighborhood environmental non-profits? No matter what you and your family are into, celebrate it with CLF at EarthFest this Saturday, May 21, at the Hatch Shell in Boston. This annual event, presented courtesy of Radio 92.9, features hundreds of environmentally-friendly vendors and sponsors along with local non-profits doing green work in your community. And if that’s not enough rockstars for you, stick around for a stellar lineup featuring Atomic Tom, Sponge, LIVE’s Ed Kowalczyk and Ok Go, among other acts of musical greatness.

So tomorrow, come out and show your support for CLF and New England’s environment! Stop by our booth for environmentally-themed games, prizes and more. We’ll be strategically located between Lovin Spoonfuls and Boston Harbor Alliance in the non-profit exhibitor area between the Main Events area and the Vendor Cafe. We’ll see you there!

Let’s review:

Radio 92.9 EarthFest
Saturday, May 21
10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Hatch Shell, Boston, MA

CLF's Peter Shelley accepts EPA's Environmental Merit Award on behalf of CLF and CRWA. (Photo credit: Emily Long)

Yesterday, CLF and the Charles River Watershed Association (CRWA)  received an Environmental Merit Award from the New England office of the U.S. EPA in recognition of their exceptional work on reducing discharge of heated water from the GenOn Kendall Cogeneration Plant (formerly known as Mirant Kendall) in Cambridge, MA. The award was presented at a ceremony at Faneuil Hall in Boston.

Led by CLF Senior Counsel Peter Shelley, the two groups and other key stakeholders, undertook five years of negotiations to reduce the massive amounts of heated water that the plant was discharging into the Charles River, killing fish and destroying the river ecosystem. As a result, in February 2011, EPA issued a new water quality permit that requires the plant to reduce its heat discharge and water withdrawal by approximately 95 percent, and to ensure that any heated discharge does not warm the river enough to cause harm. In addition, the plant will capture most of the heat generated by the plant and distribute it as steam through a new pipeline to be built across the Longfellow Bridge over the next few years, at which point the excess steam will be used to heat buildings in Boston. More >

Question: What’s better than a bike share program in Boston? Answer: A bike share program in Boston, Cambridge, Somerville and Brookline. And according to this article in yesterday’s Globe, a solution may be closer than we think. Local officials in those areas are exploring the feasibility of this the-more-the-merrier approach,  which would expand Boston’s original bike share proposal, first introduced about two years ago, into a regional program that would serve those additional densely-populated communities just outside the city’s core.

An effective bike share program would serve as a complement to the MBTA, increasing access to hard-to-reach areas not currently served by the T, such as Arlington, Medford, Somerville’s Union Square or Cambridge’s Inman Square, reducing stress on the MBTA system at peak times like during rush hour or following major sporting events (if you’ve ever tried to fight your way onto the green line after a Red Sox game, you know what I’m talking about) and providing yet another alternative to driving, reducing congestion on the city’s roadways.

Cities such as Minneapolis, Denver and Washington, DC already have bike share programs in place–and we should join them. CLF supports a regional bike sharing initiative for Boston and other sensible transportation alternatives that get more New Englanders out of their cars and into their communities, whether that’s on foot or by train, bus or bike.

Learn more about CLF’s work to build livable cities and modernize transportation at clf.org.

Boston has been ranked one of the top 15 major cities for transportation by NRDC’s Smarter Cities project.  The study does not rank the cities, but Boston comes out on top alphabetically before Chicago, New York, Portland, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington–which, in our minds, means it’s number one!

While this is probably extremely hard to believe for Boston commuters who experienced too many delays as a result of the cold weather this winter, we will take a win over New York any way we can get it–particularly as the 2011 Red Sox are about to face the Yankee$ for the first time in the Grapefruit League tonight.

What helped put Boston on top? Among the factors on NRDC’s list were our our heavily-trafficked, far-reaching public transit system, including the planned Green Line extension, a project in which CLF is very involved.

See for yourself. Check out why else we made the list, and start thinking about how we can help the ruefully underfunded public transportation system in Massachusetts get better.

See what else CLF is doing to build better ways to get around in your community.

(Photo credit: terriseesthings, flickr)

The delays commuters suffered through during the recent cold weather spell have rudely exposed the MBTA’s decaying infrastructure and serious underlying financial problems.  Many of the MBTA’s vehicles are long beyond their useful life. Because of a lack of funding, the MBTA is forced to spend money to hold these vehicles together rather than to invest in new ones, which in the long run is a great waste of resources.

A February 13 editorial in the Boston Globe points to a source of funding that could be used to help address these problems: Logan Airport’s annual parking-fee revenues.  This is a great idea, considering the airport is one of the biggest beneficiaries of both the transit system and the Big Dig, but has only contributed a limited amount of resources so far. The value of transit system to the airport could easily be monetized through determining how many riders on the Blue and Silver Lines, for example, travel to and from the airport.

Maybe we can get a conversation going before the snow melts—our public transportation system is too important for the economic, environmental and social goals of the Commonwealth to endure further delay.

Be a superhero. Take the T.

In his column in yesterday’s Boston Globe, Harvard economics professor Edward Glaeser illustrates that densely developed cities are better for the environment than leafy suburbs. The column correctly states that the average household in Boston’s urban core emits significantly fewer pounds of carbon dioxide per year, in part because people in the city drive less. Unfortunately, the column also states that public transportation “does little to balance the scales”— a statement that could easily be misinterpreted to mean that the use of public transit does little to decrease carbon emissions. In fact, Glaeser’s research that formed the basis for his conclusions indicates that although city dwellers tend to use more public transportation than suburbanites, their carbon footprint is still significantly lower precisely because the emissions from transit are modest relative to the contributions of cars. Travel by public transportation emits about half as much carbon dioxide per passenger mile than private vehicles, and uses about half the fuel.

Glaeser’s message is clear. If we’re going to minimize our carbon footprint, we need to not only support denser development in downtown Boston, but also greater investment in our underfunded public transportation system.

Learn more about CLF’s work to build livable cities and innovative transportation for all New Englanders.

Today marks a new milestone for CLF in our efforts to clean up the lower Charles River. Concluding a five-year negotiation, involving CLF and the other key stakeholders, the EPA issued a new water quality permit for the Kendall (formerly Mirant Kendall) Power Plant, a natural gas cogeneration facility owned by GenOn Energy. The plant is located on the Cambridge side of the Longfellow Bridge.

The new permit requires the plant to reduce its heat discharge and water withdrawal by approximately 95 percent, and to ensure that any heated discharge does not warm the river enough to cause harm.

The outcome is remarkable, not just for the dramatic improvements it will achieve in the lower Charles, but for the way in which the parties “got to yes.”

The plant will meet the new requirements by upgrading its existing “once-through” cooling system, to a new, closed-loop system. Kendall will capture most of the heat generated by the plant and distribute it as steam through a new pipeline to be built across the Longfellow Bridge over the next few years. The combination of the new co-generation turbine and expanded pipeline will allow Kendall to drastically reduce the amount of water it extracts from the Charles River, take more heat out of the plant, and double the amount of steam it can sells to heat buildings in the city of Boston.

It’s what’s known in the business as a “win-win situation.”

Today’s events would not have happened without the incredible efforts of two former CLFers: Carol Lee Rawn, who was a senior attorney in our Boston office, and Jud Crawford, who was senior scientist. They put together the case and the legal challenge to the Mirant Kendall permits based on a demonstration that EPA’s proposed heat discharges would threaten the fish and biological system in the lower Charles. They also showed that the proposed water intake damaged fish eggs, larvae, juvenile and adult fish and that better technologies were available in the market. CLF represented the Charles River Watershed Association (CRWA), who was the perfect conservation partner for our effort.

The outcome of this case has taught CLF a number of lessons. First, that being there is half the game. If we hadn’t appealed the EPA permit, none of this would have happened, no question. EPA and Mirant Kendall ultimately showed strong leadership qualities but needed a strong push. Second, that having a range of integrated advocacy initiatives can produce multiple, serendipitous results across the spectrum of CLF’s work in clean energy, clean water, ocean conservation and healthy communities. This single decision will create an opportunity for co-generation in an urban community, improve the health of our rivers and marine life, increase the quality of life for Esplanade users and river fishermen, and reduce green house gas emissions. Third, that a mix of good science and strong legal expertise is essential to our ability to make a credible challenge. And finally, that courtesy of all of the above and the generous and faithful support of our members over the past five years,  the Charles may one day be truly swimmable and fishable again.

For more information, you can read CLF’s press release, and check out the coverage in today’s Boston Globe.