Energy activist urges closer look at community impacts

BOSTON, Mass. (SHNS)–House Democrats could unveil their rewrite of a clean energy bill as soon as next week, and climate activists hope representatives will go further than their Senate counterparts to force a more in-depth look at pollution.

Caitlin Peale Sloan, vice president of the Conservation Law Foundation of Massachusetts, has been making calls to House offices to make clear her group is “very displeased” with how the Senate-approved bill ( S 2838 ) handles cumulative impact analysis.

The existing process for siting and permitting energy infrastructure, Peale Sloan said, typically looks at each project in a vacuum without an in-depth consideration of how its emissions, noise, and other impacts would add to a community’s existing environmental impacts.

“It’s really trying to get at the fact that the burdens of industrial energy infrastructure have not been shared equitably among communities in Massachusetts over the years,” Peale Sloan said. “The siting board should be asked and required to take a look at what has been done to communities over decades, if not centuries.”

While the Senate bill does call for deployment of cumulative impact analyses that would take a broader review, Peale Sloan said she believes the language senators advanced “unnecessarily limits the scope of that analysis.”

“We need to actually take a look across the whole scope of what’s already happened in that community, and then if it is reasonable to put another piece of infrastructure there, you focus on the impacts a developer is actually going to have when thinking about what they need to do to improve the project for the community,” she said. “You need to have the full picture of context to understand whether it is the right spot.”

Some other climate groups previously criticized the Senate bill for not going further to enhance protections for environmental justice communities, who face disproportionate burdens from energy infrastructure and climate change.

House Speaker Ron Mariano and his leadership team have signaled they also want to reform the siting process, but it’s not clear how much appetite they will have for the wide range of other measures the Senate packed into its 132-page amended bill.

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