Table of Contents -- click the article title to jump directly to it
March 5, 2010 - Clock is ticking on Massachusetts medical marijuana bill (Examiner.com)
March 4, 2010 - Driscoll, Smizik host Wexner Isreal Fellows (Braintree TAB)
February 3, 2010 - Opinion: Help Brookline Become A Green Community (Brookline TAB)
January 19, 2010 - Smizik Organizes Climate Change Policy Forum (Brookline TAB)
December 10, 2009 - Lawmakers Hope Signature Push Will Lift Climate Change Bill (State House News)
November 12, 2009 - Studying the Security Threat From Climate Change (EastBayRI.com)
October 22, 2009 - Fed Memo Renews Medical Marijuana Push on Beacon Hill (State House News)
October 15, 2009 - Conservationists Rip Water Policy, Quit State Panel (The Boston Globe)
June 5, 2009 - Color of Progress (The Boston Herald)
May 14, 2009 - For Cities and Towns, A TV Horror Show (The Boston Globe)
May 14, 2009 - Bill on Beacon Hill Would Shift Cost Burden of Recycling Electronics (The MetroWest Daily News)
May 5, 2009 - From Mold to Soot, Lawmakers Share Air Quality Stories (Arlington Advocate)
May 4, 2009 - 107 legislators, 28 committee chairs, urge Cape Wind approval ASAP (Cape Cod Today)
April 6, 2009 - 78 Legislators Urge Interior Secretary to Approve Cape Wind ASAP (Cape Cod Today)
March 5, 2009 - Smizik pushes freight by rail (Brookline Tab)
February 19, 2009 - Youth infusion (The Boston Phoenix)
July 31, 2008 - Greenhouse gas curbs advance to state Senate (The Boston Globe)
July 23, 2008 - Gore gets behind emissions measure (The Boston Globe)
June 4, 2008 - Brookline support programs win state funding (Brookline Tab)
May 29, 2008 - Massachusetts law to manage and protect ocean waters (The New York Times)
May 29, 2008 - Column was case of 'swiftboating' (Brookline Tab)
May 28, 2008 - Brookline seeks state aid for 25 tainted properties (Brookline Tab)
May 15, 2008 - Pike tollpayer subsidy of Rose Kennedy Greenway dropped from bill (MetroWest Daily News)
May 13, 2008 - Threat of contaminated water draws wary eye of lawmakers (State House News Service)
April 27, 2008 - State, Feds still debating how to prevent damage to bay (New Bedford Standard-Times)
April 2, 2008 - Prison camp survior vows walk to remember massacre (The Daily Free Press)
March 25, 2008 - Pols eye foreclosure assistance (Boston Herald)
March 4, 2008 - Domestic violence advocate dedicates garden to murdered daughter, victims everywhere (Brookline Tab)
February 15, 2008 - Provision could allow building of wind farm (The Boston Globe)
January 30, 2008 - Religious leaders take green vows (The Daily Free Press)
January 14, 2008 - Activists say water pipes need as much repair as roads (SouthCoastToday.com)
November 15, 2007 - Ocean management supporters rally at Statehouse (SouthCoastToday.com)
November 4, 2007 - Global warming opponents demand cuts in carbon emissions (The Boston Globe)
August 4, 2007 - Balancing shoreline interests (Globe editorial by Frank and Speaker DiMasi)
July 8, 2007 - Right to fresh air sought for patients (The Boston Globe)
June 29, 2006 - Accord on mercury bill reached on Beacon Hill (State House News Service)
June 23, 2006 - Bill proposes to boost oversight, control over biosafety labs (Mass High Tech editorial by Frank)
June 4, 2006 - Capping the greenhouse (Globe editorial)
May 28, 2006 - THE POLITICAL TRAIL - Kennedy's wind farm move yields local heat (The Boston Globe)
May 26, 2006 - Legislators meet with South Shore municipal waste managers (Kingston Mariner)
May 15, 2006 - 69 State Legislators urge defeat of Anti-wind farm Amendment (Cape Cod Times)
May 15, 2006 - 69 Mass. lawmakers petition Congress for Cape wind farm (New Bedford Standard-Times)
May 10, 2006 - Sky to Get Less Poisonous (Boston's Weekly Dig)
April 21, 2006 -
It's possible to be clean, green, and profitable (Globe editorial by Frank and Dr. Paul R. Epstein)
Examiner.com
Clock is ticking on Massachusetts medical marijuana bill
By Mike Cann
March 5, 2010
After this week's flurry of marijuana reform news, activists eagerly await to see if the office of Health Committee Chair, Representative Jeffrey Sanchez, lives up to his pledge to give medical marijuana a vote.
With less than a couple of weeks before the Committee is dismissed for the year, MassCann/NORML delivered 1100+ postcards to the office of Health Chair Jeffrey Sanchez, and Massachusetts Patients Advocacy Alliance led a panel discussion for Representatives at the State House hosted by Rep. Frank Smizik.
Matt Allen with MPAA said, "We led a panel discussion directed at legislators led by Dr. Lester Grinspoon of Harvard University, with a medical marijuana patient and advocate, we were able to indicate to legislators and their staff that this is a serious issue."
Rep. Jeffrey Sanchez and House Speaker Robert DeLeo did not attend the panel discussion but aides for their offices were reported to be present.
I have heard from the offices of Sanchez and DeLeo that they have both received many calls, "hundreds," asking them to support medical marijuana.
Braintree TAB
Driscoll, Smizik host Israel Fellows
GateHouse News Service
March 4, 2010
Weymouth —
Members of the Wexner Israel Fellowship Program recently visited Representative Joseph Driscoll, Representative Jeffrey Sanchez, Representative Alice Peisch and Representative Frank Smizik as part of a tour of the State House and round table discussion.
The Wexner Fellows include Youself Abu Jaffar, Director of Finance at Rahat Municipality, Natasha Epstein, Deputy Manager at the Ministry of Finance, Andrea Haas, Director of Compensation Programs on Jewish Material Claims against Germany, Eyal Hulata, Technical Project Manager for the Prime Minister, Barak Loozon, Director for Personalized Education, Yitzhack Sabato, Senior Advisor at the National Insurance Institute, Eliad Weinshall, a Senior Deputy in the Ministry of Justice, and Yanai Yedvab, Head of the Physics Department at the Nuclear Research Center.
Established in 1989, The Wexner Israel Fellowship Program represents a unique and important partnership between The Wexner Foundation and Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
“I was privileged to meet with the Wexner Fellows here on Beacon Hill,” said Rep. Driscoll, adding “We enjoyed robust discussions comparing the political systems in Massachusetts and Israel, as well as health care in both the United States and Israel.”
Each year, up to ten outstanding Israeli public officials are funded to pursue a Master Degree in Public Administration at the Kennedy School and to participate in a set of leadership institutes sponsored by the Foundation itself. The goal of the program is to provide Israel's next generation of public leaders with advanced training in public management and leadership development, thus enhancing the quality of democracy and the institutional vitality of Israel's public sector.
During the course of the academic year, The Wexner Foundation sponsors a number of leadership institutes and seminars designed to supplement the formal academic experience. The Foundation's winter institutes provide Israel Fellows with in-depth training on the cultural, political, organizational, and religious realities of North American Jewish community life. This training provides a platform for creating more significant and productive relationships between Israeli leaders and their North American Jewish community counterparts. The spring institutes revolve around the dynamics of American democracy and culminate with a week of on-site meetings in Washington, D.C., giving Israel Fellows an insider's view of the American political system.
Brookline TAB
Opinion: Help Brookline Become A Green Community
By Frank Smizik
February 03, 2010
Brookline — World governments are not moving quickly enough to address climate change problems. Recent estimates show that hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide will be spent to protect people’s homes, jobs, national security and even lives, if we don’t act more quickly.
In 2008, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts passed the Global Warming Solutions Act, as well as other bills to begin to address the problems associated with climate change. This past year, both houses in the U.S. Congress submitted bills addressing the crisis, but the bills are still being negotiated.
In the meantime, many communities, including Brookline, have begun to address the issue locally. The Brookline Selectmen’s Climate Action Committee and Climate Change Action Brookline have developed a mission to raise awareness and urgency of the problem. In particular, these groups are working to reduce Brookline’s carbon footprint, educate citizens about doing their part, and provide valuable resources and support. (See www.climatechangeactionbrookline.org and www.brooklinema.gov.)
The Green Communities Act, also signed in 2008, gives Massachusetts’ cities and towns a great opportunity to receive both technical and financial assistance to reduce energy use and provide more clean energy. By becoming a Green Community, towns receive technical and financial assistance for their projects while saving money on their energy bills and protecting our planet and our public health.
Our town already purchases some fuel-efficient vehicles; however, low emissions must be more of a priority as we replace our municipal vehicle fleet. Transportation is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in Massachusetts. We already have a public transit system here in Brookline and Boston, so the next logical step for us is using more efficient, low-emission vehicles.
We also must reduce our municipal energy use by at least 20 percent over the next decade. We already have a head start through an Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant from federal stimulus money, but there are many other steps we can and must take. Our building heating and electricity use is responsible for a huge portion of our emissions. On a town-wide level, we can reduce our energy use by passing a new building energy “stretch code,” which is up for adoption at Town Meeting this spring. On an individual level, I urge every person and business in Brookline to call their utility companies to receive a free energy audit and to participate in energy reduction initiatives.
Global climate change is real; it’s a problem, and humans are the cause. This is the overwhelming consensus among scientists. Polar ice caps are melting, ocean temperatures are increasing, sea levels are rising, and severe weather events are becoming more frequent, yet harder to predict. The composition of our ecosystems is also changing, as species migrate out of increasingly hostile climates, and more non-native species enter.
Boston Harbor is experiencing sea-level rise firsthand as walkways are flooded during summer high tides. Towns on the Cape see their roads and sometime whole neighborhoods washed away by violent storm surges each year. We are also seeing more invasive species in Massachusetts, like the Asian longhorn beetle, and fewer of our region’s signature plants, crops, wildlife and marine life.
Climate change is a global problem, but it presents Brookline and Massachusetts with the opportunity to once again become global leaders in innovative technology and healthy living. Please join me on the state level by supporting Brookline in our effort to become a Green Community, by supporting legislation to make our electronic products more energy efficient and requiring our electronics producers to be responsible for recycling the products they create.
Cleaning up our planet, and our communities, is good for our health and good for our economy.
Rep. Frank Smizik, D-Brookline, represents the 15th Norfolk District in the state House of Representatives, and is chairman of the House Committee on Global Warming and Climate Change.
Brookline TAB
Smizik Organizes Climate Change Policy Forum
January 19, 2010
Brookline — State Rep. Frank Smizik, D-Brookline, chairman of the House Committee on Global Warming and Climate Change, has organized an informational event about national and international perspectives on climate change policy. The event will take place Monday, Feb. 1, 10:30 a.m., at the State House, and will feature Todd Johnson, lead energy specialist in the Latin America and Caribbean Region of the World Bank, and Kevin Knobloch, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Johnson will discuss his work on low-carbon development for the World Bank, as well as his recent trip to attend the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meetings in Copenhagen, Denmark. Johnson brings 30 years of experience in international energy and environmental-related fields, and has coauthored numerous articles and reports on climate change. Since 1991, he has worked at the World Bank, an international organization providing financial and technical assistance to developing countries for improvements in infrastructure, education, health, public administration, financial development, agriculture and environmental and natural resource management.
Knobloch will discuss national climate change policy, including the Kerry-Boxer bill — i.e. the Clean Energy and American Power Act — being considered by the U.S. Senate. Knobloch is knowledgeable in a wide range of environmental, energy and arms control issues, with 30 years of experience in policy, media and advocacy. For the last six years, he has served as president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, arguably the world’s leading science-based non-profit advocacy group working to bring scientific integrity to the decision making processes in government policy, corporate practices, and consumer choices. Knobloch represented UCS at the United Nations International Climate negotiations in 2005 and again in 2007.
“Climate change affects our entire planet,” said Smizik. “We have set up strategies for our state, but we also must work with other states and other countries to gain world cooperation and move to reduce emissions worldwide. I’m glad we have such esteemed people able to lend their expertise at this event and give us a broader perspective.”
This hearing is open to the public and media and legislators are encouraged to attend.
State House News Service
Lawmakers Hope Signature Push Will Lift Climate Change Bill
By Kyle Cheney
December 10, 2009
Boston, Mass. - After hearing from experts about the potential for flooding, increased disease and the destruction of crops that may be wrought by global warming, lawmakers on Wednesday said they are exploring ways to make climate change “more real” to people in their daily lives.
“It sounds to me like we need to be planning very quickly,” said Rep. Frank Smizik (D-Brookline), chair of the House Committee on Global Warming and Climate Change.
Smizik said state lawmakers from around the country are hoping to gather 1,000 of their colleagues’ signatures to urge Congress to act on legislation aimed at curbing carbon emissions and controlling climate change.
“We haven’t taken a stand on whether the bills are perfect because they’re not,” said Smizik, who traveled to Washington D.C. last month to discuss the effort with White House staff. “But we need something as soon as possible.”
Smizik spoke at a hearing during which experts described the short- and long-term effects of climate change on Massachusetts.
As sea levels rise, said Paul Epstein, associate director of Harvard Medical School’s Center for Health and Global Environment, Massachusetts’s key crops, such as cranberries, could be devastated, and flooding could spread disease, extend the mosquito season, contaminate drinking water with pesticides and chemicals, and damage infrastructure.
Epstein said public policy moves to replace dark-colored roofs with white roofs, encourage rooftop gardens, build walking and bike paths, preserve open space and incentivize public transportation could help mitigate the effects. He said more volatile winter weather – “orthopedic weather” – could drive up medical expenses as slick roads freeze over more regularly and cause injuries.
Rep. Will Brownsberger (D-Belmont) said “sprawl” is the main issue driving climate change. “We’re chewing up eco-systems at, what is it, 40 acres a day?” he said. “That’s what’s doing it right now.”
The hearing, the third in a three-part informational series on the impact of climate change, comes as international climate talks are underway in Copenhagen, and following the release of emails between British climate scientists that indicated data had been manipulated to support the idea that global warming is manmade.
Steve Long, director of government relations for the Nature Conservancy, told the News Service he didn’t think the controversy would sap momentum for action on federal legislation.
“Given that the House has already passed a climate bill, and given the leadership behind the Senate bill, our own Senator Kerry partnered with Senator Graham who initially wasn’t very supportive of the climate legislation, there’s a good coalition built in the Senate to get a climate bill through,” Long said. “There’s a lot of interest in doing a climate bill because there are so many provisions in the bill that relate to the economy – a lot on green jobs, a lot on energy efficiency and conservation.”
Long said Massachusetts could serve as a “laboratory” for policies to adapt to climate change.
“We have forests, we have coasts, we have wetlands. We have almost all the ecosystem types that would be represented in the United States,” he said.
During the hearing, Andy Finton, director of conservation science for the Nature Conservancy, said that for Massachusetts to adapt to climate change effects, policies need to be developed to protect and restore wetlands and forests, manage river ecosystems, fund green building, expedite permitting for dam removal and minimize coastal development.
Smizik and Brownsberger, who stayed for the entire hearing, were the only two of 10 committee members – including two Republicans – to attend the hearing. Lawmakers, who began a six week recess from formal sessions on Nov. 18, have little activity scheduled until January.
EastBayRI.com
Studying the Security Threat From Climate Change: Panel Enlightens on a Different Way to Look at Environmental Issues
By George Morse
November 12, 2009
SEEKONK - The Earth’s climate may see drastic changes over the next few decades and aside from this shift presenting challenges to food supplies and the world’s economy, it could also present a serious national security threat.
These were the words of a panel of experts who gathered for a conference at Seekonk High School Tuesday night. The subject of the session was global warming and how it relates to national security. Along with State Representatives Frank Smizik and Steven D’Amico (chairman and member of the House Committee on Global Warming and Climate Change, respectively) the hearing also featured David Janik, South Coast Regional Coordinator from the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management, Alex Cornell du Houx, campaign director of Operation Free, Commander Paul E. Matthews, a United States Navy oceanographer and member of the Navy’s Task Force on Climate Change and Dr. Christopher Jasparro from the national security decision making department at the Naval War College, where he teachers security strategy and forces in addition to strategy and security. Mr. Gasparro is also the Naval War College’s Africa Area Study Coordinator.
For starters, Rep. Smizik said there is a “widespread consensus” that global warming is real. He also said the effects of this change are being felt “much earlier” and in a much more “severe” fashion than expected.
“Planning and being prepared for climate change is the right thing to do. It is smart and necessary,” Rep. Smizik said.
Likewise, Mr. Janik said that “preparation is key” when it comes to a potential shift. Focusing his presentation on Massachusetts and how a climate shift could impact various parts of the commonwealth, Mr. Janik said cities and towns need to start looking at where emergency shelters are located to make sure these facilities aren’t inside flood zones. Judging where this type of flooding could take place, Mr. Janik said, can be determined by looking at a variety of maps including flood insurance rate maps (FIRMs) and hurricane surge inundation maps that judge how regions could deal with a category 1, 2, 3 or 4 storm.
In the years to come, Mr. Janik said communities and citizens can start planning for a climate shift in a number of ways, such as re-designing structures like seawalls near waterfront homes and elevating buildings and utilities higher off the ground in case of flooding.
Rep. Cornell du Houx, who serves as a State Representative from New Brunswick Maine, spoke next. Operation Free, whose mission is to secure America with clean energy, is a coalition of veterans who want to help lessen a climate shift’s threat to national security. When he was deployed with the Marines just outside Fallujah in 2006, Rep. Cornell du Houx said he saw first hand what a scarce supply of energy can do. When his unit went to enforce a curfew on a massive line of vehicles waiting for diesel, a riot ensued.
Depending on foreign sources of energy reserves like oil, Rep. Cornell du Houx said, presents a national security risk because America’s need for energy can hinder foreign policy, buying oil from the Middle East helps fund terrorist and other extremist groups and purchasing energy from across the globe entangles American with hostile, foreign regimes.
Continuing, Rep. Cornell du Houx said the Pentagon, State Department and CIA, among other national security agencies have all invested funds and resources into climate change research and long-term planning related to it.
Mr. Jasparro agreed. He added, however, specific instances of how climate change could lead to instability. In regions where a severe storm, drought or outbreak of disease could displace thousands or even millions of people, refugees would begin to swarm into nearby countries. Mr. Jasparro said not only are these refugees targets for recruitment into extremist groups, their religion could also serve as a point of conflict with other citizens of the country to which they’ve migrated.
Bangladesh, for instance, is one area at risk of flooding from rising sea levels. A couple of the panel’s experts said refugees from Bangladesh would flood into India, where a clash of religion could bring about much instability.
Additionally, Commander Matthews said the Navy has been monitoring climate change because it literally affects what they do every single day. He said not only does a climate shift present challenges to the Navy’s sea tactics, it could even impact land based training as well.
State House News
Fed Memo Renews Medical Marijuana Push on Beacon Hill
October 22, 2009
Medical marijuana proponents are citing a U.S. Justice Department memo released this week in their effort to convince the Massachusetts Legislature to become the 14th state to pass a law legalizing the use of marijuana for medical purposes.
The October 19 memo generally discourages federal prosecutors from expending resources pursuing individuals who are in compliance with state medical marijuana laws.
The memo, which describes prosecution of significant traffickers of illegal drugs and the disruption of drug manufacturing networks as “core priorities,” was signed by Justice Department Criminal Division Assistant Attorney Lanny A. Breuer and top officials at the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration.The Capitol Hill-based Medical Marijuana Project seized on the ruling, saying it “gives new impetus to the drive to pass a medical marijuana bill in Massachusetts.” Such legislation (H 2160) was heard in May by the Public Health Committee but has not emerged for a vote. It is sponsored by Rep. Frank Smizik (D-Brookline) and its cosponsors include Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Charles Murphy (D-Burlington), Sen. Robert Hedlund (R-Weymouth), Mental Health and Substance Abuse Committee Chair Rep. Liz Malia, Elder Affairs Committee Chair Rep. Alice Wolf (D-Cambridge) and House floor division chair Rep. Ellen Story (D-Amherst).
A Suffolk University poll released last month found 81 percent of Massachusetts voters support medical marijuana legislation.
In a statement released by the Medical Marijuana Project, Marcy Duda of Ware, who suffers from chronic pain and nerve damage due to brain surgery, said, “I hope this sends a signal to our legislators that there is no reason not to move ahead with legislation to help seriously ill patients. I’ve tried prescription painkillers that are very addictive and just knock me out. Medical marijuana helps me get by.”
Rhode Island passed a medical marijuana law in 2006.
The Boston Globe
Conservationists Rip Water Policy, Quit State Panel
By Beth Daley
October 15, 2009
Members of four influential conservation groups abruptly resigned from a state waterway advisory panel yesterday, alleging that a new state policy undercuts environmental protection of rivers so greatly that some could run bone dry.
Members of the Conservation Law Foundation, Charles River Watershed Association, Ipswich River Watershed Association, and Clean Water Action sent a joint resignation letter to Governor Deval Patrick saying the policy “removes any environmental consideration’’ from decisions about how much water is safe to remove from a river basin for industry, agriculture, or household use.
The resignations are the most significant break yet between environmentalists and the Patrick administration, which has largely enjoyed the groups’ support. They also underscore the growing pressure on the state’s 11,000 miles of rivers and streams for lawn watering and other uses as development spreads out from Boston. Today, 160 rivers and streams already suffer from low flows or water levels.
“This move makes a mockery of sustainable water management,’’ said Peter Shelley of the Conservation Law Foundation. The groups pulled their representatives from the state Department of Environmental Protection’s Water Resources Management Advisory Committee, saying the panel - specifically assembled to help guide the state on water issues - was not consulted on the state’s new approach.
The groups said the new water policy could allow much larger amounts to be withdrawn from stressed rivers such as the Charles and Ipswich. For example, the new policy could allow an additional 22 million gallons to be taken from the Ipswich River, they say. The river, largely considered to be the most stressed in the state, has suffered from fish kills in the past because the state allowed it to be pumped dry. Brook trout, a local favorite, have all but disappeared from the parched upper Ipswich.
State Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Laurie Burt defended the state measure late yesterday, saying the new policy will help set Massachusetts on a path to sustainable water withdrawals. She said the groups were informed of the state’s new policy before it was formally announced last week.
“I am confident this will end up in a much better place than where we have been in the last decade,’’ Burt said in an interview.
At issue is the interpretation of “safe yield’’ - long considered by state officials and environmentalists as the amount of water that can safely be taken from a waterway during a drought while protecting fish and other river life. The state was directed to determine the “safe yield’’ of river basins in the 1986 Water Management Act, but has struggled since then to come up with a formula to calculate the amounts for each waterway.
Now, the state has finally issued a formal definition of safe yield, describing it as “the amount of water that would be present during a drought year’’ for each of the state’s 27 watershed basins, according to a statement from the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.
Burt said the state will develop stream-flow criteria to ensure rivers and streams are managed with the environment in mind. Safe yield is just one of 10 factors - economics and time of year are among the others - that help the state determine how much water can be withdrawn from a waterway, she said.
But environmentalists say the new interpretation could result in severely taxed waterways, especially as the state prepares to issue 20-year water withdrawal permits to communities and water departments across the state. They say it could take years to come up with stream-flow criteria and, in the meantime, rivers could be drawn down until they are muddy or rock-strewn footpaths.
With about 4 feet of rainfall a year, Massachusetts has long escaped the water woes so visible in the Western United States. The enormous Quabbin Reservoir provides ample water for drinking, showering, and lawn watering to dozens of communities in Eastern and Central Massachusetts and has so much left over its managers want to sell it. Yet suburban and rural communities outside that system have to draw water from rivers and wells, some from sources that are becoming increasingly stressed.
A new state Department of Fish & Game report found that river fish are disappearing from many Massachusetts waterways - including the upper Charles and Blackstone rivers, in part because too much water is being taken from them. Native bait fish, such as common shiners, have plummeted in the Blackstone, in Central Massachusetts.
Aspects of the state’s new sustainable water policy were praised by some environmentalists when it was announced. But by yesterday, even the president of The Environmental League of Massachusetts, who was quoted in a state news release last week supporting the plan, said he had a problem with the safe yield definition.
“Our obligation is to ensure the environment is protected,’’ said George Bachrach of the Environmental League. He said the safe yield definition is “basically saying trust us.’’
State Representative Frank Smizik, a Brookline Democrat who chairs the House Committee on Global Warming and Climate Change, said the state was working to balance conservation and economic needs.
“They are going to base the stream flow [criteria] on science,’’ he said. “I think this can be worked out.’’
The Boston Herald
Color of Progress
By Frank I. Smizik
June 5, 2009
Clean energy jobs are no myth for the many people working as solar installers for North Andover-based Nexamp, Inc., or as energy auditors helping make Massachusetts homes more energy-efficient with Westboro-based Conservation Services Group (“What are ‘green jobs’?” May 31). And the American Clean Energy and Security Act will create even more clean energy jobs and reduce our dependence on oil.
Chairman Ed Markey and the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which represents diverse views from across the country, have taken an historic step toward a clean energy future.
Opponents are trying the same old tactics that fossil-fuel suppliers have used for years to thwart clean energy legislation. But ACES will reboot our economy, spur investment in clean energy technologies, and create thousands of jobs here in Massachusetts.
- Rep. Frank I. Smizik,
15th Norfolk District
The Boston Globe
For Cities and Towns, A TV Horror Show
Bill Would Shift Recycling Costs to Makers
By Bina Venkataraman, Globe Correspondent
May14, 2009
As more people switch to flat-screen - a trend that is expected to accelerate with the switch from analog to digital transmission next month - aging cathode-ray tube televisions are going the way of the cassette player. But discarding them is complex, creating an environmental conundrum that is costing Massachusetts cities and towns millions of dollars.
Today, state lawmakers will hear a bill that would make manufacturers, rather than municipalities, responsible for recycling unwanted televisions, computer monitors, and other electronics - items that can harm human health and the environment if not disposed of properly.
Although the Legislature has not passed similar bills in the past - manufacturers oppose such measures, warning that the costs would have to be passed on to consumers - environmental specialists and some public officials say the growing tide of electronic waste, combined with economic pressures, give the bill greater urgency.
Seventeen states, including Maine, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, already have rules, called producer responsibility laws, that require manufacturers to pay for recycling electronic waste. More than a dozen others are considering them.
Massachusetts cities and towns collectively spend an estimated $2 million to $4 million dollars a year on electronic waste collection and disposal, said Greg Cooper, recycling director for the state Department of Environmental Protection.
Bay State residents and businesses discard 300,000 tons of cathode-ray tube monitors and televisions a year, officials say. Each cathode-ray tube television or computer monitor contains, on average, four to five pounds of lead and trace amounts of other toxic metals that can also leach into groundwater - which is why Massachusetts banned them from landfills and incinerators in 2000.
Cities, towns, and businesses now contract with recyclers who either sell used monitors and TVs or recycle their components. Safely recycling them is expensive - it requires dismantling the tubes and washing the leaded glass - which gives recyclers an incentive to sell them to buyers overseas. Most cities and towns do not keep track of where their electronic waste ends up.
"We don't know where it goes," said state Representative Frank Smizik, the bill's sponsor. "Some of it certainly goes to Third World countries."
Smizik will present the bill today to the Joint Committee on the Environment, Natural Resources, and Agriculture, of which he is the House chairman.
A 2008 Government Accountability Office report found that a "substantial quantity" of used electronics is exported to developing countries, "where disposal practices are unsafe to workers and dangerous to the environment." Some go to poor communities desperate to extract trace amounts of precious metals, officials said.
In Massachusetts, the more immediate issue is the high price cash-strapped communities pay to dispose of electronic waste. Boston alone spends about $200,000 each year collecting and recycling televisions and computer monitors, officials say.
"It's a burden on the city," said Susan Cascino, Boston's recycling director. "You could call it an unfunded mandate."
Some recycling companies, such as M&K Recovery Group in North Andover, prefer not to take in large numbers of televisions, because they are expensive and difficult to recycle responsibly, said the company's director of business development, Matt Decareau. The company says it must charge customers about $15 to recover the cost of recycling each cathode-ray television.
The state does not track electronic waste collected at the municipal level. But its environmental agency has received reports from 240 cities and towns showing they collected nearly 8,000 tons of electronic waste in 2007, up from about 6,000 tons in 2006. Tens of thousands of additional tons were collected directly from businesses by recycling companies.
"We've seen a steady increase in TVs, and I think it's partly because of the transition in technology," said Cooper.
That appears to match larger trends. Nationwide, from 2004 to 2007, the number of discarded televisions increased by 14 percent to about 21 million, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. The Consumer Electronics Association estimated that Americans purchased 2.9 million high-definition televisions for this year's Super Bowl.
Starting next month, analog televisions that operate by antenna will require a special converter box to display the new digital signal. Rather than buy and install the box on their old set, many consumers are trading up to a new flat-screen television and tossing the old one out - or trying to.
An estimated 99 million unwanted television sets are stored in Americans' homes, officials estimate.
Randi Mail, recycling director for Cambridge, which spends about $20,000 annually for electronics recycling, said it makes sense for companies to deal with waste created by their products, because "the industry doesn't check with communities to say they are making new packaging or a new product. . . . We're not part of that conversation."
Over the past several years, electronics companies have opposed producer responsibility bills in Massachusetts and elsewhere, citing the transfer of costs to consumers and their preference for voluntary or national efforts. At the same time, large manufacturers and retailers are increasingly designing their own programs.
Dell unveiled a policy Tuesday that prohibits the company and its vendors from exporting defunct electronics to developing countries.
Until other companies follow suit, officials in Massachusetts and elsewhere say, Congress should pass and enforce laws that will support recycling programs without leading to further export of electronic waste.
"A little bit of federal leadership in this area would go a long way," said Laurie Burt, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Policy.
The MetroWest Daily News
Bill on Beacon Hill Would Shift Cost Burden of Recycling Electronics
By Michael Morton, Daily News Staff
May 14, 2009
Picking up the environmental mantle of his predecessor, state Sen. James Eldridge, D-Acton, will join committee colleagues today for a hearing on a bill he has sponsored to ensure electronics get recycled without burdening municipalities.
Instead, manufacturers of computers, printers, televisions and other electronics will be required to pay Massachusetts cities and towns to collect and store discarded items until the firms can ship them to a certified recycler.
Doing so will keep more than 8 million pounds of electronics out of landfills and incinerators, and their chemicals out of waterways, said Eldridge, vice chairman of the Legislature's Joint Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture.
"We're not doing a good job making sure these things are not hurting people's health," he said. The freshman senator also said he has picked up environmental causes championed by his predecessor, Pamela Resor. Eldridge's legislation is co-sponsored by state Rep. Frank Israel Smizik, D-Brookline.
The state already bans disposal of metal, certain types of plastic, products containing mercury, and the cathode ray tubes found in older computer monitors and TVs.
Greg Cooper, deputy director of consumer programs at the Department of Environmental Protection, said other electronic parts frequently get recycled, including through programs established by manufacturers, but can also end up in landfills or incinerators.
Across the state, roughly two-thirds of cities and towns run programs to collect electronic waste, typically charging residents a fee for drop-offs and contracting with companies to recycle the items or haul them away.
Other towns, such as Hudson and Southborough, hold annual collection days, Eldridge's staff said.
In Hopkinton, Selectman Matt Zettek said the town had been left footing the bill for illegally discarded electronics. He called for a comprehensive, statewide system.
"It's sort of frustrating," he said. "You have 351 communities and each one has to deal with it on its own."
To discourage residents from illegal dumping, Eldridge's bill would end service fees and expand drop-off opportunities. It would also end municipalities' financial involvement in collecting old electronics, placing the responsibility instead with manufacturers.
Eldridge's staff said the bill will strengthen the state's recycling industry, encourage environmental considerations in product design and build on existing recycling programs offered by some computer companies and retailers.
A spokesman for the Associated Industries of Massachusetts, a manufacturing trade group, could not be reached for comment. Asked if this bill would drive up prices for consumers, Eldrige said manufacturers were still operating in a competitive environment.
"I think the marketplace takes care of that."
Arlington Advocate
From Mold to Soot, Lawmakers Share Air Quality Stories
By Kyle Cheney, Statehouse News Service
May 5, 2009
Boston, Mass. - Rep. Steven D’Amico said he developed asthma as a child as a result of an oil space heater his family used to heat the trailer he grew up in.
Rep. Frank Smizik said his asthma helped him speak “from experience” about why he believes public buildings should use environmentally friendly cleaning products.
Rep. Lori Ehrlich said the high school principal in her district just announced plans to step down as he succumbs to a serious, painful bone cancer. “We are in shreds,” she said of her Marblehead community.
These were among the personal stories lawmakers told as they urged the Committee on Public Health to take favorable action on bills to eliminate harmful cleaning products from schools, research the soot particles hovering in the air and study the toxic mold that plagues the structure of homes and the health of families.
Ehrlich is pushing a bill she says “will set national precedent” by charging polluters a fee to be dedicated to research and studies on the effects of the pollution they cause.
The bill (H 2046) would charge companies that emit “hazardous air pollutants” at a rate of 20 cents per pound, which she argues would bring in about $1.8 million per year.
Ehrlich said her constituents were shocked that research on such pollutants wasn’t already taking place.
“People feel that they couldn’t possibly get away with pouring these toxics on us,” she said.
Describing his own struggle with asthma, D’Amico, a Seekonk Democrat, argued in favor of a bill proposed by Rep. Denise Provost (D-Somerville) to require reporting on the effect of particulate matter on communities.
Provost said “nano-particles” hovering in the air get caught in people’s noses and larynxes, causing illness and stoking asthma.
Smizik, a Brookline Democrat, argued in favor of a bill that would require public buildings and schools to use safe cleaning products to ensure the health of employees and children.
Sen. Susan Fargo (D-Lincoln) wondered how the measure would be enforced without clearly prescribed penalties for violations.
Smizik said he believed schools would comply without the threat of punishment and that the Department of Public Health could release data periodically to monitor who is in compliance.
Fargo responded that it would be challenging to pile responsibilities on DPH while the agency is having its budget cut. Lawmakers have been wary of tackling legislation with price tags as they eye a budget deficit that has grown to nearly $1 billion this fiscal year, and another, greater gap next fiscal year.
Anti-asthma advocates testified on behalf of a variety of bills at the hearing, calling for education on air quality issues for parents.
Bill backers spoke before an all-Democrat panel – the three Republican members and half of the 14 Democratic members did not attend – that included one senator, the chair Sue Fargo, and seven House members, including chair Jeffrey Sanchez (D-Boston).
Sanchez has his own bill on the docket (H 1028) to require health insurers to cover equipment to manage asthma, such as inhalers or allergen-proof bed covers. The bill also requires insurers to cover training and education for asthma patients and their families. Sanchez’s proposal has 11 co-sponsors in the House and one in the Senate.
Cape Cod Today
107 legislators, 28 committee chairs, urge Cape Wind approval ASAP
Majority of Massachusetts Legislators write to D.O.I. Secretary Ken Salazar
Call Cape Wind good for environment, good for economy, win for Bay State
May 4, 2009
A majority of the members of the Massachusetts Legislature, 107 in total, representing Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate, including 28 Committee Chairmen, have signed onto a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar urging him to approve Cape Wind "as soon as possible."
"It's clear to me that people realize Cape Wind is a development that is good for the environment, good for the economy, and overall a real win for Massachusetts."
- Chairman Frank Smizik
This announcement today coincides with an event in Newark, Delaware where Vice President Biden and Interior Secretary Salazar are highlighting offshore wind power development in the United States.
Chairman Frank Smizik who authored the letter said he was pleased to have obtained nearly 30 additional signatures less than a month after he first submitted the letter with 78 signatures.
"Projects that start controversial up here usually stay controversial. Not Cape Wind - rarely have I seen legislators come to such a consensus in support of a project as they learn more about it, and this letter - with a strong and ever-growing majority of the legislature signing on - represents that," said House Chairman Smizik.
"It's clear to me that people realize Cape Wind is a development that is good for the environment, good for the economy, and overall a real win for Massachusetts," Smizik added.
U.S. Secretary Ken Salazar is expected to issue a Record of Decision on Cape Wind in the near future. The Minerals Management Service of the U.S. Department of Interior issued Cape Wind a favorable Final Environmental Impact Statement in January. In March, the Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Board voted unanimously to issue Cape Wind a ‘Composite Certificate' that will finalize State permitting.
"Cape Wind is shovel-ready."
- Jim Gordon, Cape Wind
"I am pleased that a majority of the Massachusetts Legislature along with Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and 86% of the citizens of Massachusetts support Cape Wind and want Massachusetts to become home to the nation's first offshore wind farm," stated Cape Wind President Jim Gordon. "Cape Wind is shovel-ready," Gordon added.
Last month one of the most respected environmental organizations on Cape Cod, the Association to Preserve Cape Cod, came out in favor of Cape Wind, joining the Cape Cod Chapter of the League of Women Voters and the Woods Hole Research Center, along with several leading national environmental and labor organizations, in supporting Cape Wind.
"I have witnessed growing support for Cape Wind throughout my District on Cape Cod." - Matt Patrick
"I have witnessed growing support for Cape Wind throughout my District on Cape Cod," said Matt Patrick, Representative of the 3rd Barnstable District which includes the shoreline nearest to Cape Wind's proposed offshore wind turbines.
Two independent public opinion polls have found statewide support for Cape Wind to be 86%.
There are a total of 200 Members of the Massachusetts Legislature. Chairman Smizik expects the number of members who have signed onto this letter to continue to grow.
Cape Cod Today
78 Legislators Urge Interior Secretary to Approve Cape Wind ASAP
April 6, 2009
This morning, Chairman Frank Smizik of the Massachusetts House of Representatives announced 78 Members of the Massachusetts House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans, have signed a letter urging Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to approve Cape Wind as soon as possible.
Cape Wind Communications Director Mark Rodgers moments ago notified Secretary Salazar of this letter during a public meeting on offshore energy being held by at Atlantic City, New Jersey. Rodgers also submitted the original copy of the sign-on letter to a member of Secretary Salazar's staff.
The Letter was prepared by Frank I. Smizik, Chairman of the House Committee on Climate Change and Global Warming and by Marc R. Pacheco, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Climate Change and Global Warming. The letter began:
"As Interior Secretary Ken Salazar begins his public meetings across the country today on offshore renewable energy, we want him to know that Cape Wind has the strong support of the Massachusetts Legislature and the public," said House Chairman Smizik. "It is time for Cape Wind to be approved so that we can create jobs, increase energy independence, and demonstrate Massachusetts leadership on climate change," Smizik added.
Cape Wind has been reviewed by 17 federal and state agencies for the past seven years. The final report, issued earlier this year by the Interior Department, said the wind power project would create jobs, reduce air pollution and have minimal impacts.
"The time for action on climate change is now -- Cape Wind will position Massachusetts as a global leader in offshore renewable energy development," said Senate Chairman Pacheco.
To see Representative Smizik's press release today click here.
To see the letter signed by House Members, click here.
To see the letter signed by Senate members, click here.
The Brookline Tab
Smizik pushes freight by rail
March 5, 2009
Brookline - Newly appointed House Chairman of the Committee on Global Warming and Climate Change, Rep. Frank Smizik of Brookline, will join 30 state and local leaders from across the country in Washington to meet with members of Congress to urge support for legislation that will lead to an increase in freight rail capacity.
Smizik is a member of Go21, a national public interest organization that advocates the public benefits of moving freight by rail, such as increased fuel efficiency, reduced greenhouse gas emissions and easing traffic congestion. Go21 members are joined in the ninth annual Railroad Day on Capitol Hill by 300 representatives of the nation’s freight railroads and rail supply industry.
As former chairman of the state Legislature’s Joint Committee on Environment, and newly appointed chairman of the House Committee on Global Warming and Climate Change, Smizik is tasked with shaping the debate on one of the most defining issues of our time.
Freight railroads offer significant public benefits. They are the most efficient and environmentally sound way to move goods. A freight train can move a ton of freight an average of 436 miles on a single gallon of fuel. In addition, for every ton of freight that moves by rail instead of truck, greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by two-thirds or more. Finally, one train can carry the load of 280 trucks, relieving congestion on our already crowded highways.
“A key issue to be addressed in my meetings with legislators is the expansion of freight rail capacity. Today’s poor economy notwithstanding, the Department of Transportation projects that the demand for freight transportation will double in the next two decades. Railroads are the best way to meet this demand, and the time to invest is now,” said Smizik. “Specifically, I want to urge Congress to support the bi-partisan Freight Rail Infrastructure Capacity Expansion Act (H.R. 272), legislation which would provide a 25 percent tax incentive for any business investment in new track or other projects that would equip railroads to continue providing the affordable, efficient transportation Americans depend on.”
The Boston Phoenix
Youth Infusion
The surprisingly diverse leaders of team DeLeo. Plus, do environmentalists have reason to worry?
By David S. Bernstein | February 19, 2009
As the dust settled from new House Speaker Robert DeLeo's massive re-shuffling of state legislative leadership this past week, insiders and pundits pored over the assignment lists like high priests reading entrails, divining the winners and losers on Beacon Hill — and clues to the style and ideology that might prevail for the new two-year legislative session and beyond.
Largely unnoticed, though, was a trend that mere names on paper failed to convey: the move away from leadership by aging white men.
The state's House of Representatives, as a whole, still looks like a throwback in our new age of government diversity — and the new 58-year-old Speaker is no Barack Obama.
But in DeLeo's restructuring, white, non-Hispanic men older than 45 fell from power in droves. Among those taking their places in leadership roles were a number of ambitious young DeLeo loyalists from Greater Boston. First-time chairs — all under the age of 45 — include Linda Dorcena Forry of Dorchester (Community Development and Small Business), Jeffrey Sanchez of Jamaica Plain (Public Health), and Michael Moran of Brighton (Election Laws). Kathi-Anne Reinstein of Revere, who is 38, is on the leadership team as one of DeLeo's four Division chairs.
In addition to those from the immediate Boston area, the under-45 crowd in the House includes the new majority leader and the new chairs of Ways and Means; Bills in Third Reading; Economic Development and Emerging Technologies; Financial Services; Telecommunication, Utilities, and Energy; and other high-profile committees.
DeLeo, in an interview with the Phoenix after announcing the new assignments, says that he was not specifically looking for young chairs — just people with knowledge on the issues, who were willing to work hard.
One observer suggests this is the "Flaherty model," referring to former Speaker Charlie Flaherty: "Find the people who are serious and smart, put them in positions of power, and give them enough room to either rise or fall."
Sal DiMasi, and Tom Finneran before him, both preferred lower-profile loyalists, who would follow orders from command central.
DeLeo says he wants the new chairs to be leaders in shaping the agenda, and will give them some latitude. "I didn't name them a chair just to be a lapdog of the Speaker," he insists. On the other hand, he says, ideas will have to be vetted through the Speaker and leadership team.
Women are well represented among the leadership positions, despite comprising just a quarter of House Democrats. Close to 60 percent of the female House Democrats have leadership positions, according to Marty Walz of the Back Bay — who was named chair of the Committee on Education.
"I do think it's a benefit" to have women in those positions, says DeLeo. "A lot of these women . . . have been untapped resources, to be very frank with you."
While African-American and Hispanic representatives are still few and far between in the House, DeLeo found spots not only for Forry and Sanchez, but also for Byron Rushing, Cheryl Coakley-Rivera, and Elizabeth Malia.
Walz is also one of several liberal appointments, which sparked interest from those worried the House might take a rightward turn under DeLeo. Another is Alice Wolf, the legendary Cambridge leftie, who at age 75 has received her first chair assignment.
"People don't know how to pin me down [ideologically,]" says DeLeo, who seems to want to be thought of as pragmatic. "I didn't pick people based on ideology. I just want you to work hard."
Of course, the decisions were also based on rewarding those who helped DeLeo rise to Speaker. Some picks, like Walz, suggest that women and young progressives were with DeLeo, at least in part, because they felt he would allow them to thrive. After all, if DeLeo is calling all the shots, it doesn't matter whose faces surround him.
Green concerns
Young Boston-area state senators also made out well, in the relatively limited reshuffling done by State Senate President Therese Murray. Jack Hart of South Boston moved up, and Anthony Petruccelli of East Boston and Anthony Galluccio of Cambridge, each with less than a full term in the chamber, were made chairs of the Environment, Natural Resources, and Agriculture and Higher Education committees, respectively.
Petruccelli's appointment took local environmental advocates by surprise — he has little track record on the issue, and Eastie is not normally thought of as one of the tree-hugging capitals of Massachusetts. And with less than two years in the Senate, Petruccelli doesn't seem to bring much clout to the committee, some say.
Petruccelli realizes that his selection might come as a surprise. "People look at it and scratch their heads out of curiosity," he says.
Adding to environmentalists' worries, DeLeo appointed a new House Environment chair, William Straus of Mattapoiset, who is also largely unknown on the issue.
This is a big shift. The Committee on Environment, Natural Resources, and Agriculture had been co-chaired by State Senator Pam Resor and Representative Frank Smizik, both considered friendly to eco-interests. Resor did not seek re-election in 2008, and Smizik will chair a new House global-warming committee.
Some environmental activists worry that the appointments of Petruccelli and Straus signal that their issues will be moved to the back burner on Beacon Hill, after an extraordinarily productive 2007–'08 session that saw the passage of laws on global warming, ocean management, renewable energy, and green jobs.
It would be easy for the legislature to pat itself on the back and move on. But activists say there's a lot more to be done. "We have a long way to go," says George Bachrach, president of the Environmental League of Massachusetts.
This session's priorities include legislation to protect the state's water supply and to reduce the use of toxins in manufacturing. Bachrach is also hoping to see an increase in spending on environmental issues, which he says are being funded below their 2003 levels. In addition, strong advocates are needed to keep an eye on the implementation of this past session's complex environmental laws.
Petruccelli insists that his appointment is no indication that environment has been moved down the priority list. "To the contrary, I'm excited about the opportunity," he says. "I think this is a hot committee right now."
He also predicts that environmentalists will find him to be a strong ally. "People in East Boston are more interested in environmental issues than people realize," he says, citing as examples Logan Airport, automobile traffic, and beaches.
And Speaker DeLeo says that Straus also has a history of being "extremely interested in the environment."
Susan Reid, of the Conservation Law Foundation in Boston, agrees. "Straus is a pretty smart guy, with a good track record" on pollution issues relating to his home district, she says.
While environmental advocates are cautiously optimistic on Petruccelli and Straus, they are enthusiastic that DeLeo named Smizik chair of the new House Committee on Global Warming. DiMasi chose not to go along with the idea of a new committee this past year, but DeLeo has done so now.
"I told Frank [Smizik] I wanted him to start it up," says DeLeo, "because he has so much experience with the issue." That decision has DeLeo on the Greens' good list — for the moment.
To read the "Talking Politics" blog, go to thePhoenix.com/talkingpolitics. David S. Bernstein can be reached at dbernstein@phx.com.
The Boston Globe
Greenhouse gas curbs advance to state Senate
By Elizabeth Daley and Martin Finucane
July 31, 2008
The Massachusetts House gave preliminary approval yesterday to a bill that would sharply curb greenhouse gas emissions in the state.
The measure has moved to the Senate for final approval. Aides said Patrick may sign it into law as early as today.
The proposed law would require that the emissions, which scientists say are causing global warming, be reduced from 1990 levels by as much as 25 percent by 2020. It also calls for a reduction of 80 percent by 2050. The bill provides fines of as much as $25,000 a day for violations.
"Now is the time to take action," said Representative Frank Smizik, chairman of the Joint Committee on Environment, Natural Resources, and Agriculture. He warned his colleagues that without action, the state's climate would soon feel like South Carolina's. The bill passed unanimously on a 154-to-0 vote.
Former vice president Al Gore wrote a letter last week urging the House to act.
More than 100 representatives signed a letter to House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi supporting the bill.
The business community has opposed the bill.
The redrafted bill is expected to be passed by the Senate and to be signed into law by Governor Deval Patrick.
The gas emissions bill was one of a number of actions taken by lawmakers yesterday as they wind down their business before a summer recess.
Hoping to give shoppers a break and to boost retail sales, Patrick signed the sales tax holiday into law yesterday. The move will suspend the 5 percent tax for many items Aug. 16 to 17.
Patrick said he was glad the state could give people a break in time for back-to-school purchases. "We hope it stimulates all sorts of sales activity during what is otherwise a slow time of year," he said in a statement.
The sales tax will be suspended for purchases up to $2,500 not including meals, telecommunications services, tobacco products, gas, steam, electricity, motor vehicles, and motorboats.
Also yesterday, the House made a technical change in a bill allowing gays who live in other states to marry in Massachusetts. The change allows gays to marry here immediately rather than after 90 days.
The move was made one day after members voted to repeal a 1913 law that blocked such marriages.
The House gave final approval to the bill yesterday and attached an emergency preamble to let it take effect as soon as it is signed by the governor. Most bills must wait 90 days before becoming law.
In other action, a bipartisan House committee recommended lawmakers use identification cards to cast their votes.
DiMasi introduced the new, secure voting system after members were caught letting others vote for them, including one who was in the Virgin Islands at the time of a vote.
Material from the Associated Press and the State House News Service was used in this report.
The Boston Globe
Gore gets behind emissions measure
By Neil Munshi
July 23, 2008
Former vice president Al Gore has endorsed a bill that would require sharp reductions in carbon emissions in Massachusetts, and some state legislators and leading environmental groups hope his support will spur the State House to approve the measure before the end of the formal session next week.
Gore wrote a letter urging action by the House on the Global Warming Solutions Act - which has already passed the state Senate. More than 100 representatives have signed a letter to House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi in support of the bill, which would require greenhouse gas emissions to be 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, and 80 percent below by 2050.
DiMasi has not taken a position on the bill, nor has the administration of Governor Deval Patrick, though it is generally supportive of a statewide cap on emissions.
"I urge your colleagues to take even bolder steps toward solving the climate crisis," Gore wrote in the letter, which was read aloud during a State House news conference yesterday by state Senator Marc R. Pacheco, who sponsored the legislation. "We have an historic opportunity to shift to a clean-energy economy, and, in the process, create new, sustainable jobs to support the development and deployment of these new technologies."
A number of other speakers said global warming should be seen more broadly than in just economic terms.
"I'm afraid right now that we are more concerned about the business climate than the earth's climate," said state Representative Frank I. Smizik, chairman of the Joint Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture. "Until we realize they are not mutually exclusive, we won't be able to address these issues."
Members of the Conservation Law Foundation, Environment Massachusetts, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and other advocacy groups also were there to promote the bill.
The House can vote only if the speaker moves the bill to the floor by next week.
"The bill is still under consideration here," said David Guarino, the speaker's spokesman. "But it should be clear to anyone who has been watching the session that we've already" made significant progress on energy.
Robert Keough, spokesman for the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, agreed.
"Under Governor Patrick, Massachusetts joined the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and became the first state in the nation to require greenhouse gas analysis and mitigation in major real estate projects," he said in a statement. "Comprehensive energy legislation, the oceans management bill, and pending biofuels legislation all put Massachusetts into a leadership position nationally. We support the creation of an economy-wide cap as the next step in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but many details remain to be worked out with the Legislature."
Brookline Tab
Brookline support programs win state funding
June 4, 2008
Brookline – Last week, the Massachusetts Association of Jewish Federations was successful in securing funding for the Naturally Occurring Retirement Community and the Russian Teens-At-Risk program in the budget approved by the Senate and the House of Representatives. Both of the programs are located in Brookline and are owned and operated by the Jewish Family and Children’s Service of Greater Boston.
The NORC allows low-income seniors to age in place by providing services, such as health care and transportation, to them in their community or neighborhood. The Russian Teens program provides a support system for Russian youths with substance abuse problems.
State Sen. Cynthia Creem, D-Newton, was the lead sponsor for both programs in the Senate, and state Rep. Frank Smizik, D-Brookline, was the lead sponsor for both programs in the House of Representatives. Creem and Smizik fought during budget negotiations to secure $125,000 for the NORC program and $100,000 for the Russian Teens program. Budget negotiations were tough this year because Massachusetts is facing a $1.3 billion deficit and many programs were cut this year out of the state budget.
As of February, 2008, 150 seniors ? most in their 80s and 90s ? were participating in the program in Brookline and receiving a wide range of support services, including on-site health care, case management, counseling, exercise and strength training, and engagement in mentally stimulating on-site programming.
Drug abuse and other illegal behavior among Russian-speaking teens have declined dramatically since the establishment of this program. Teens’ parents also report a dramatic improvement in academic performance, attitude and motivation in their children. Past participants, who are now college students and graduates have returned to provide leadership and role-modeling for current participants.
The New York Times
Massachusetts law to manage and protect ocean waters
By Katie Zezima
May 29, 2008
BOSTON — Gov. Deval Patrick signed into law Wednesday a measure that will establish the nation’s first management and protection plan for a state’s ocean waters.
The law sets ground rules for all offshore projects and businesses, including energy ventures and conservation areas that lie in state waters. The state controls all water within three miles of the coast, about 1.6 million acres of water.
“This is a first in the nation for a comprehensive approach to managing the ocean,” said Tom McCann, spokesman for the Ocean Conservancy, a national advocacy organization. “It’s an important road map that other states can follow.”
The law comes as numerous projects are being proposed for the waters off Massachusetts. They include liquid natural gas terminals, wind farms, and sand and gravel mining operations. Currently, the state approves projects case by case. The law acts much like zoning, laying out what can be built where.
“There’s a symphony, sometimes a cacophony of activity going on or proposed in our coastal waters,” said Ian Bowles, the state secretary of energy and environmental affairs. “What’s unique about this is it puts everything on the table, how to prioritize things, how to protect areas that need to be protected, support fishing and energy, and prepare for development.”
Projects that have already undergone a full state review will not be subject to the law, and these include the controversial Cape Wind project, the nation’s first offshore wind farm.
The law calls for the creation of a 17-member board to advise Mr. Bowles on ocean decisions and to include members from local planning commissions, a fishery, an environmental organization and an expert in renewable energy. Another panel that includes only scientists will also provide guidance.
“It’s been a first-come-first-serve gold rush mentality with projects,” said Priscilla Brooks, director of the ocean conservation program at the Conservation Law Foundation. “This allows the state to be proactive and plan for this development while taking into account the needs of the environment.”
In 2003, the Pew Oceans Commission issued a report saying that states and the federal government were not protecting and managing ocean resources. It said the United States had “failed to conceive of the oceans as our largest public domain, to be managed holistically for the greater good.”
Leon E. Panetta, a White House chief of staff in the Clinton administration and the chairman of the Pew Oceans Commission, said in a statement Wednesday that the Massachusetts law followed the spirit of what the Pew report called for.
“With this bill, Massachusetts has become a leader in ocean policy in this country,” the statement said.
Brookline Tab
Column was case of 'swiftboating'
By Rep. Frank I. Smizik, 15th Norfolk District
May 29, 2008
“Swiftboating” has become a term used to identify character assassinations in the guise of political speech. In her column [“The flak is flying in South Brookline,” May 22], Regina Frawley has proven to be a worthy practitioner of that tactic. At the May Town Meeting in 2007, I rose to speak in support of protecting the Hoar Sanctuary, a well-used and well-appreciated nature conservancy.
This sanctuary is beneficial to the quality of life in South Brookline and is used by all town residents.
The result from my rising to speak is a column from Ms. Frawley that accuses me of unethical conduct as well as contempt for South Brookline. She uses an unattributed statement about South Brookline — that I never said — to promote her weak case. She brings up a professional relationship that I have had with Ken Kurnos, implying that the relationship is the reason that I spoke out, which it is not. (Incidentally, if Ms. Frawley had reviewed voting records in Town Meeting, she would find that Ken and I disagree more than we agree).
Let me set the record straight. Ken’s law firm has no pecuniary interest, nor have they filed any papers, in the matter concerning the construction of a turnaround on Princeton Road adjacent to Hoar Sanctuary. My testimony last May made no critical remarks of South Brookline; my only concern was the protection of a place where small animals, birds and natural habitat can survive. As House chair of the Joint Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture, I look at issues like this every day. Of course, my legislative work influences my views relative to issues in my own community … as well they should.
This matter is a simple question of whether to permit development that would encroach upon and destroy a natural treasure that Brookline has protected in the past.
People are tired of personal charges made at political figures and candidates at all levels of government. I found Ms Frawley’s column to be based upon assumptions, guilt by association and personal animus. I reject this kind of politics.
Brookline Tab
Brookline seeks state aid for 25 tainted properties
By Neal Simpson
May 28, 2008
Brookline - Brookline officials are asking the state to pitch in millions of dollars for the cleanup of residential properties tainted by soil from the town’s old landfill, which was recently capped and hasn’t been used for decades.
Officials have offered few details about the required cleanup, citing ongoing negotiations with neighbors, but Town Administrator Richard Kelliher said as many 25 homes on the western side of Skyline Park, the former Newton Street Landfill, could be affected. The town has set aside $2.9 million to start the cleanup, while lawmakers are seeking an additional $12 million from the state.
Ed Coletta, spokesman for the Department of Environmental Protection, confirmed that 25 homes in the vicinity of Martha’s Lane and Kensington Circle had been tainted with ash from the town’s old incinerator. He said the ash was discovered during the construction of a new home on Martha’s Lane in 2005.
Public Works Commissioner Tom DeMaio said that the soil could contain lead, though none has been detected.
“We’ve looked at it, we’ve looked at the situation on the other side, but there’s really no imminent health hazard to this,” he said.
DeMaio said all affected homeowners have been notified, and that work has already begun around some homes. Some homeowners have agreed to cleanup plans, while others are still negotiating with the town.
Colletta, the state spokesman, said the state is working with the town to remove as much material as is “feasible or practical.” On other tainted property, the town has had to remove soil as far down as 3 feet.
The new batch of tainted properties is just the latest in a decade-long effort to close the Newton Street Landfill, which stopped serving the town in the 1970s. In 2005, the town began capping the landfill and replacing it with a new park, which is slated for a grand opening next month.
The cleanup effort has been confounded by lead-tainted ash from the town’s old incinerator, which operated on and off from 1952 to 1975. In some cases, private developers used the ash as fill when building nearby homes.
Though the houses sit on private property, the Department of Environmental Protection has held the town responsible for their cleanup. Between fiscal 2004 and 2007, Brookline spent nearly $5 million cleaning up 26 properties along Newton Street and Hammond Pond Parkway, according to DeMaio. Trees had to be removed in some cases and several yards had to be re-landscaped.
If the town gets the aid it has requested, it would be the first time the state has helped pay for cleanup around the landfill. Rep. Frank Smizik, D-Brookline, and Rep. Michael Rush, D-West Roxbury, submitted the request in April as an amendment to the environmental bond bill.
“Obviously, this is something that’s necessary for public health and safety, and I feel very comfortable putting this in the bond bill,” said Smizik.
Even if the bill passes the legislature, Gov. Deval Patrick will have final the say on how the money is spent. Town officials have already begun petitioning the governor to secure his support.
At a May 7 Brookline Chamber of Commerce breakfast at which the governor was speaking, Selectman Chairman Nancy Daly asked Patrick to help secure money for what she called an “extraordinary environmental issue.”
Patrick said he was unfamiliar with the legislation, and declined to pledge his support until he had more information.
“I will find out about it, and then we will do what we can to support you,” he said.
It’s not clear how the money would be spent or how many homes could be cleaned up, though Kelliher said that the $2.9 million could be used to clear out up to eight properties of the 25 affected.
DeMaio said the town has not yet determined how far the money will go.
“This is another phase, and where it takes us, God knows,” he said. “We’re all marching to a drum.”
Neal Simpson can be reached at nsimpson@cnc.com.
MetroWest Daily News
Pike tollpayer subsidy of Rose Kennedy Greenway dropped from bill
By Lindsey Parietti
May 15, 2008
BOSTON —
After removing a controversial provision that would have forced turnpike tollpayers to shoulder a $10 million payment, a legislative committee Thursday approved a bill transferring control of the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway from the Turnpike Authority to a private conservancy.
MetroWest lawmakers have heavily criticized the legislation sponsored by House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi, arguing that the cash-strapped authority, which hit pike users with higher tolls in January to pay for Big Dig debt, should not have to pay to ease takeover of the Boston parks.
“We heard strongly from the legislators from MetroWest,” said Joint Environment Committee Chairman Rep. Frank Smizik, D-Brookline, of the decision. “They didn’t think it was fair to put money that MetroWest people pay for the turnpike tolls and have the money go to the Boston Greenway.”
State Rep. David Linsky, D-Natick, applauded the committee’s decision, saying, “The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority is clearly not in any financial position to contribute to the construction and maintenance of the greenway. MetroWest commuters for too long have paid far too much for the construction of the Central Artery and they should not have to also pay for the park on top of the Central Artery.”
The authority paid $5 million to match private donations to the conservancy in 2005.
The nonprofit conservancy was created in 2004 and scheduled to assume control of the 15 acres of parks in 2012, but after reaching its $20 million fundraising goal early, Executive Director Nancy Brennan said in February that the conservancy could be ready to take over as early as 2010.
Brennan did not return calls for comment.
Under the revised legislation, the nonprofit conservancy, which is funded mostly by private donors, would receive $2 million from the state and a maintenance shed from the Turnpike Authority, Smizik said.
When asked whether the substitution would be sufficient Smizik said, “I hope so. They’re going to have to raise money.”
After fighting against toll hikes last fall, Turnpike Authority Board member Mary Connaughton of Framingham called the decision a win for tollpayers.
“That’s very good news for MetroWest,” she said. “It would have been a shame if tollpayers had to foot the bill for this $10 million, which in this day and age is totally out of hand.”
The House and Senate must approve the bill before it reaches Gov. Deval Patrick’s desk.
MetroWest Daily News staff Lindsey Parietti can be reached at lindsey.parietti@cnc.com.
State House News Service
Threat of contaminated water draws wary eye of lawmakers
By Kyle Cheney
May 13, 2008
Boston - Perfumes, antibiotics, sunblock and veterinary drugs - parts of a nightmarish cocktail of contaminants described by state officials that threatens the state's water supply.
Although Massachusetts water regulators maintain that the Bay State's water is not only the cleanest but the best-tasting around, lawmakers held a hearing Tuesday in response to recent reports that drinking water around the country has been tainted with trace amounts of dozens of pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs).
"Clean water is the lifeblood of the environment," said Environment Committee Chairman Frank Smizik at the outset of the hearing, held jointly with the Committee on Public Health, adding "Pharmaceuticals have begun to appear in water."
Testimony included little documented evidence of harm to humans as a result of contaminated water, but experts warned that trace amounts of medicines in the water could cause people to develop a resistance to the antibiotics meant to help them. Other dangers, they said, include damage to wildlife and vulnerable ecosystems, as well as unforeseen effects on humans should trace amounts of different medicines mix.
Pharmaceuticals end up in the water largely as a result of human waste, experts said at the hearing, but also when people dispose of their excess medication by flushing it down the toilet, a practice that was once encouraged by pharmacists. Other sources include waste emitted by pharmaceutical laboratories and assisted living facilities.
State officials decried a lack of federal support for water pollution prevention and treatment.
"The presence of these products in water supplies is certainly an emerging national issue and a legitimate concern," said Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Laurie Burt. "The issue around contamination around drinking water supplies is usually led on the federal level."
Public Health Committee Co-chair Rep. Peter Koutoujian shared that sentiment, saying, "It appears that the federal government has not been stepping up on this issue."
Burt said the absence of federal support has led her department to analyze the "very, very low levels" of pharmaceuticals found in Massachusetts water.
"Mass DEP is supporting further study to determine the extent of these substances in our water sources," she said. "We will also be looking at different treatments that are commonly used to see how effective they are."
One such treatment hailed by the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority is the bubbling of ozone through the water supply. When the Associated Press reported in early March that water around the country had been contaminated, the MWRA tested its water for 30 compounds often found in pharmaceuticals and also for caffeine, the presence of which is common when water treatment fails.
"The results came back clean on all counts," said MWRA Executive Director Frederick Laskey.
Laskey said the MWRA, which provides water to 2.3 million Massachusetts residents, would continue "our aggressive water protection." He said filtering ozone through the water before it is delivered neutralizes dangerous compounds and even adds a "crisp" taste to the water. He noted that water authorities in Cambridge and Worcester also use ozone to treat their water.
A representative for the pharmaceutical industry, Leslie Wood, said drugs found in the water supply were only detectable because of advances in technology that enable scientists to analyze water in parts per trillion, as opposed to the previous standard of parts per billion.
"Studies conducted today suggest it is highly unlikely that there is a risk to human health because of these trace amounts in the environment," Wood said. "There appears to be no demonstrable risk."
Wood added, "Pharmaceuticals will not result in short-term or acute toxicity."
Public Health Committee member Rep. Alice Wolf said the appearance of even trace amounts concerned her.
"I get very nervous when people say, 'we see these pollutants but we don't think they have any effect,'" Wolf said.
Robert Zimmerman, executive director of the Charles River Watershed Association, said beef, pork, chicken and milk all contain higher proportions of dangerous antibiotics than water.
"This committee needs to make sure that whatever resolution ... you look at the totality of the issue," he said.
Officials mulled several potential suggestions about how best to mitigate the presence of contaminants in the water, including the possibility of establishing pharmaceutical "takeback" programs, in which drug distributors would establish a process for reclaiming unused medication and encourage consumers to return them to the store.
Members wondered about the feasibility and the effectiveness of such a program, but all agreed the disposing of excess drugs via toilet is no longer advisable.
"We are asking residents not to flush unused prescription drugs down the sink but to dispose of them as safely as possible in the trash," Burt said. In the past, consumers were told to flush various medications, including OxyContin, to stem the possibility of drug abuse by anyone who discovered the pills in the trash.
In written testimony to the committee, one environmental advocacy group challenged Commissioner Burt over regulations DEP may promulgate that could relax waste restrictions on hospitals, nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
"The proposed regulations reclassify hospitals as 'residences.' Currently, they are classified as industrial, as well they should be," said Kyla Bennett, director of the New England wing of Public Employees for Environmental Safety in an email to the News Service.
In testimony submitted to the committee, Bennett said, "DEP appears to be giving lip service only to the problem of PPCP contamination. It is of great concern to note that DEP's new proposed groundwater discharge regulations reclassify nursing homes and hospitals as 'residences,' therefore making it easier for these facilities to discharge into ... municipal wells."
Under questioning from Rep. Jennifer Callahan, Burt said assisted living facilities and similar waste producers should be evaluated based on whether they directly discharge into a water supply or into a sewer system.
New Bedford Standard-Times
State, Feds still debating how to prevent damage to bay
By David Kibbe
April 27, 2008
BOSTON — Five years after a Bouchard Transportation Co. barge struck a ledge and ripped open on Buzzards Bay, coating the shoreline with dark globs of oil, the federal and state governments are still arguing over how to prevent it from happening again.
The Legislature passed far-reaching, new protections in 2004, only to see most of them discarded by a federal judge who said it stepped on the Coast Guard's jurisdiction. The state law would have imposed a requirement on oil shippers to hire tug escorts and state-licensed pilots to help them cross Buzzards Bay.
Last year, an appeals court sent the case back to U.S. District Court for a new hearing, where it still awaits action on the fifth anniversary of the oil spill.
In the meantime, the Coast Guard moved on long-awaited regulations to prevent oil spills, but elected officials and environmentalists said it was too little, too late.
Last fall, the Coast Guard began requiring single-hulled barges to use tug escorts and federally licensed pilots in the narrow, tricky bay. But the requirement does not apply to double-hulled vessels, as the state was seeking. The Coast Guard said that double-hulled vessels pose less risk.
Roughly half the oil shipments that cross the bay are double-hulled.
The Legislature is still probing for ways to get around the federal court ruling and go further than the Coast Guard.
With three months left in session, coastal legislators are increasingly optimistic they can pass a bill to require tug escorts and state pilots for both single- and double-hulled oil shipments in Buzzards Bay.
The proposed state law has been sitting in the House Ways and Means Committee since it passed the Senate unanimously in November.
House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi has not taken a position on tug escorts. However, he heard plenty about the bill during a boat tour of Buzzards Bay with Southeastern Massachusetts legislators earlier this month.
"It does start to make you nervous when you get so close to the end of the session, but we are feeling very optimistic right now," said Mark Rasmussen, executive director of the Coalition for Buzzards Bay. "Our local delegation has let leadership at Ways and Means and the speaker's office know how important this is to the region."
The bill is also a priority of Rep. Frank Smizik, D-Brookline, House chair of the Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture Committee. Rep. Smizik was also on the boat tour.
"The bill is very necessary," Rep. Smizik said. "We went out on Buzzards Bay a couple of weeks ago. You can see how narrow it is, how many ledges and problems with navigation that there are out there. It is really important that we protect Buzzards Bay with legislation like this."
The new legislation would require the state Department of Environmental Protection to dispatch tug escorts with experienced state pilots to shadow both single- and double-hulled oil shipments that enter the bay.
To pay for the escorts, the delivery fee on oil shipments to marine terminals would be raised by 3 cents a barrel, up to 5 cents. That would match the fee charged in Rhode Island.
Oil transportation companies that did not notify the state 24 hours before they entered the bay would be subject to triple the normal fines if they caused a spill.
The clock is running down on the legislative session, with action on any controversial bills ending for the year on July 31.
"I always get anxious about time as we get close to the end of the session," Sen. Montigny said. "In this case, I'm even more anxious, because every day that we allow companies like Bouchard to ply those waters and wreak havoc on our environment, it's a day that those of us who love the bay or rely on the bay for our livelihood should be quite concerned. ... This bay is not really any more protected than it was five years ago."
The shipping industry is arguing against the new proposal, again warning that it treads on federal jurisdiction over the waterways.
Rep. John F. Quinn, D-Dartmouth, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, has been lobbying to get the bill through. He brought it up with Rep. DiMasi on the boat tour.
"I urged him to take action," Rep. Quinn said. "Chairman Smizik was on that boat. He said it was one of his top priorities to get it done. We're all on board. We are just trying to push it over the goal line."
Sen. Montigny said the region "has a very strong group of House members who feel just as strongly as I do that we need to pass this bill."
Last fall, the Coast Guard also required all oil shipments to use a vessel movement reporting system so the Coast Guard and Army Corps of Engineers can track them through the bay. But local officials said the Coast Guard should have also required the use of state pilots, not federal pilots, whom they contend are less familiar with local conditions.
U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., is also pushing for changes at the federal level, including a requirement that oil shipments be accompanied by state pilots with a federal license or federal pilots who have experience in Buzzards Bay. The proposal passed the U.S. House last week as part of a larger package on fishing safety.
If the federal government adopted the state's oil spill law, the fight would be over. For now, the legal and legislative tussles will go on.
"We said all along that if the federal law was changed, that would resolve it," Rep. Quinn said.
The Daily Free Press (The Independent Student Newspaper at Boston University)
Prison camp survivor vows walk to remember massacre
By Alyssa Assamnew
April 2, 2008
Yang Jianli, a former Chinese political prisoner who returned to Brookline after a five-year stint in a prison camp, said he plans to walk 500 miles from Boston to Washington, D.C., to honor those who helped bring him home and raise awareness of the Chinese government's human rights violations.
Yang's announcement came after Rep. Frank Smizik, a Brookline Democrat, honored him for his activism for democracy and human rights in China in a special ceremony at the State House yesterday.
Yang, who is also a Tiananmen Square Massacre survivor, said he will leave Boston on May 4 and will travel on his "GongMin Walk" through New York City, Philadelphia and Baltimore before reaching Washington, D.C. on June 4, the 19th anniversary of the massacre, in which the Chinese government crushed pro-democracy protesters. Yang said with his 22.5-inch stride, he will take about 1.4 million steps during his walk.
Yang's group, Initiatives for China, is a new Boston-based coalition committed to empowering Chinese citizens and pro-democracy groups in the Communist country.
The father of two said he had returned to China in 2002 to study the country's labor unrest before he was arrested for treason. After a yearlong trial, he was convicted and sentenced to a five-year prison term, during which he said he was tortured and put in isolation for long periods. He finished his term last April and returned to Boston in August.
Yang called his walk a way of "throwing a little more tea in the harbor," alluding to Boston's role in the American Revolution.
"As Boston goes, so goes the nation," he said. "As America goes, so goes the world."
Yang said most Chinese do not find truth in the Olympic motto of Beijing, "One World, One Dream," but think "One World, One Nightmare" is more accurate.
Fourteen-year-old Anita Fu, Yang's daughter, said life was hard while her father was gone. "We're just trying to get used to everything, with him back," she said. "He's adjusting, too."
Initiatives for China spokeswoman Elaine O'Malley said Yang's walk coincides with the Olympic Games to be held in Beijing this summer.
"In the coming Olympics, he wants to bring to everybody's mind the moral incompatibility between their human rights violations and their role as host of the games," she said. "He feels that America is the only country in the world with the both the moral strength and the political strength to do anything."
Brookline resident Sarah Leinbach said she plans to host a fundraiser for Yang when he gets to Washington, D.C. She said she never met him before his imprisonment, but she and fellow All Saints Church parishioners sent him letters and postcards and prayed for him every Sunday.
"I really thought he would never return," she said. "It still seems a miracle to see him."
Boston Herald
Pols eye foreclosure assistance
By Jerry Kronenberg
March 25, 2008
Four state lawmakers want people facing foreclosure to get six months of breathing room and a day in court before losing homes.
“Today we have the three triage mechanisms before us and we didn’t even realize our patient is dying,” Rep. Elizabeth Malia (D-Jamaica Plain) said in joining Reps. William Lantigua (D-Lawrence) and Rep. Frank Smizik (D-Brookline) in unveiling the House proposals. State Sen. Dianne Wilkerson, a Roxbury Democrat who has herself faced foreclosure, is sponsoring the bills in the Senate.
If the measures become law, they would:
• Require lenders to wait six months before foreclosing;
• Give homeowners a chance to challenge seizures in state court - something current law doesn’t generally allow;
• Order lenders who foreclose on rentals to keep leasing units to tenants who pay on time. Currently, tenants usually face automatic eviction following foreclosures.
But foreclosure expert John Anderson, who blames much of the problem on people buying homes they never should have, said he opposes all but the plan to allow tenants to stay in rentals.
“If they slow down the pace of foreclosure on deadbeats, they’re just going to raise the price of doing business in Massachusetts,” Anderson said.
Brookline Tab
Domestic violence advocate dedicates garden to murdered daughter, victims everywhere
By Jessica Scarpati
March 04, 2008
BROOKLINE - Jennifer Lynch would have turned 37 years old last weekend.
That is, the budding poet and photographer would have turned 37 if her husband hadn’t shot her three times in the chest at their Oregon home on Valentine’s Day 2006.
Instead, the former Brookline resident’s birthday passed on Sunday, March 2, while dozens of supporters gathered to try to make sense of her murder and dedicated a “Garden of Remembrance” to her and other domestic violence victims.
“She’s always going to be here with us,” said her mother, Pat Norling, an office manager at the town’s Health Department.
Norling has become a tireless advocate in the wake of the tragedy, telling her daughter’s story and working to get the garden built.
“The main thing is to raise awareness for domestic violence and to make sure this doesn’t happen to another family,” she said at the dedication ceremony. “We’re going to fight as hard as we can.”
As much as the service was intended to address domestic violence, it wasn’t without tearfully memorializing the life and namesake of the event.
When Lynch’s niece, Meghan Dilg, sang “Candle on the Water,” the young girl’s breathy voice seemed to ache as she repeated the final verse three times, “I’ll never let you go.”
Gerry Trombley, Norling’s colleague at the Health Department, said he recalled the mother and daughter playing softball on the ground that now honors her life and death.
“The greatest thing Pat did was give her a tremendous faith — a belief that all human beings should be respectful of each other,” Trombley said.
Lynch — who grew up on Davis Avenue — was showering at her home in Oregon when her husband shot her and then himself. She was 35.
Norling said her son-in-law, Gary, left a note that read: “I killed my wife Jennifer. I killed myself. We had some problems. The dog is in the yard.”
The West Roxbury resident has said she knew her daughter had been having problems with her husband, but never imagined the eventual outcome.
If Norling has it her way, it’s a story that would never repeat again — anywhere.
“We must change our culture,” said state Rep. Frank Smizik, D-Brookline. “It can’t only be judges or legislators or district attorneys. Every time we look at this garden, we should say, ‘Never, never, never again’.”
Meanwhile, others noted the garden as a symbolic step toward more tangible results and resources in addressing domestic violence in Brookline.
“Envision yourself an agent of change. Envision what it is you can do and do it. Do not just sit here and reflect,” said Jean Marie Carroll, an assistant district attorney for Norfolk County, who for 20 years has prosecuted domestic violence and sexual assault crimes.
Hsiu-Lan Chang, a member of the local Rotary Club, said that while women’s shelters in Boston continue to lose beds as state funding decreases, Brookline should fill the gap.
“We can’t just send them home,” said Chang, a Coolidge Corner resident and local business owner. “We need to build a safe place for these victims here in our town.”
Changing the system
Brookline Police Chief Daniel O’Leary said that in the past three years, police have handled an average of 125 domestic violence cases per year. Each year, about 85 of those cases ended in an arrest.
Since 1997, Brookline Police began a policy of adopting a “mandatory arrest” policy on domestic violence calls, provided police have probable cause. They can also issue immediate restraining orders.
“We are nowhere near ending domestic violence,” O’Leary acknowledged, saying police are undergoing more training to identify “high-risk indicators” of violent relationships.
“People like Pat and her family … is what it’s going to take to end it,” he added.
Judge Thomas May, who presides over Brookline Municipal Court, said the court issued 90 restraining orders in 2007 — working out to be “just under one per 1,000” residents, he said.
“They cut across all socioeconomic barriers, across all racial divides, all income statuses,” May said, adding that there is “nothing as troublesome as” domestic violence issues for judges.
“It forces one to confront the darkest recesses of human nature,” he added. “And a judge is always mindful that a restraining order is not a bulletproof vest.”
The comments had particular resonance in light of the recent murder of a 37-year-old Malden woman, whose body was found in the trunk of her car in late February. Her former boyfriend, against whom she had taken a restraining order, is a lead suspect in the murder.
Looking for answers, May called back to the symbolism of a garden.
“Anyone that’s ever had a garden knows they require work,” he said. “It takes pruning, it takes weeding, it takes the right amount of sun, it takes the right amount of rain, and after all, that’s what human relationships take.”
Jessica Scarpati can be reached at jscarpat@cnc.com.
The Boston Globe
Provision could allow building of wind farm: bill would guide energy projects in state waters
By Beth Daley
February 15, 2008
Large wind farms could be constructed in state waters under legislation passed by the Massachusetts House of Representatives Wednesday that critics said could aid a controversial wind energy project in Buzzards Bay.
The only pending project directly affected by the legislation is the 120-turbine wind farm proposed by developer Jay Cashman. Cashman is a friend of House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi, who failed last year to get passed a similar measure that would have helped the farm to be built.
"There is only one project on the table that this affects right now," said John F. Quinn, a Democrat from Dartmouth. He said he wants more public input before any permanent changes are made to ocean regulations, in part because there could be similar projects proposed along the state's coast. "This is a dramatic change - let's not slip it in."
The wind farm provision is part of the Oceans Management Act, a wide-ranging bill that would guide the location of renewable energy projects and other activities in state waters.
Most of Massachusetts waters are designated ocean sanctuaries, and structures in them are prohibited unless state environmental regulators agree they are needed by "public necessity and convenience." The ocean protection legislation passed this week is designed, in part, to clarify that renewable energy projects are allowed in these waters.
The Senate passed a version last year that most environmentalists applauded, allowing for the construction of small-scale wind power projects in most state waters, but only if they are consistent with a yet-to-be-developed Ocean Management Plan that would map out the best places to put them. Under the Senate bill, that plan would have to be completed in 24 months.
But the House version is vaguer, critics say, allowing any wind project in state waters and not requiring that they be consistent with an Ocean Management Plan. The House version also sets no deadline for the ocean plan, they say.
"This is the first time in the nation any state has contemplated a comprehensive plan to manage development of the oceans," said Priscilla Brooks of the Conservation Law Foundation, a Boston-based environmentaladvocacy group. The House version, she said, gives little teeth to any Ocean Management Plan.
Supporters of the House version say the language in no way was meant to give Cashman any advantage to build his wind farm, and point out that any wind farm project has to undergo environmental review. The Cashman wind farm was denied in 2006 because the state environmental secretary at the time said it was forbidden under the Ocean Sanctuaries Act and it could threaten an endangered bird species.
DiMasi spokesman David Guarino said that the speaker was aware of the language in the bill but that its sole focus was to "encourage renewable energy."
Representative Frank Smizik, a Brookline Democrat who is House chairman of the Joint Committee on the Environment, Natural Resources, and Agriculture, said the House version would allow needed renewable energy to be built in state waters as soon as possible. He said he didn't want projects to go through the same seven-year permitting process that a proposed 130-turbine wind farm in federal waters in Nantucket Sound has endured.
"We wanted it to be a little less tight" than the Senate version, Smizik said. "Our view is the [ocean management plan] is a blueprint, not a zoning law. We need wind farms."
House and Senate negotiators will meet in coming weeks to come up with compromise language. If both chambers agree, the measure would then land on Governor Deval Patrick's desk.
Ian Bowles, state secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs, said despite the differences between the Senate and House versions, it is important to note the state is on its way to having one of the first planning documents to guide ocean development.
"This legislation represents an important leadership opportunity for the Commonwealth," Bowles said. "Massachusetts would be the first state in the nation to enact a comprehensive ocean planning law."
Beth Daley can be reached at bdaley@globe.com.
The Daily Free Press (The Independent Student Newspaper at Boston University)
Religious leaders take green vows
By Kelly Allen
January 30, 2008
Though some activists turn to scientists and environmentalists to address climate change, religious leaders joined yesterday at the State House to show a united front in support of policies that protect the environment.
The Massachusetts Interfaith Climate Action Network held the Day of Prayer and Advocacy to recognize the importance of preserving the environment's beauty and resources for the sake of future generations.
Suffragan Bishop Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts retired Rev. Roy F. Cederholm took out a picture of his grandchildren, emphasizing the importance of preserving the environment for future generations.
"Can they count on us to leave them a beautiful planet full of resources?" he said.
Rabbi Eric Gurvis said children must learn how to create beauty without destroying the earth.
"We have been given incredible raw materials, but if we do not protect them there will be nothing left from which we can create raw beauty," he said.
Sen. Marc Pacheco (D-Plymouth), chairman of the Senate Committee on Global Warming and Climate Change, said due to its public health and economic effects, climate change is the most pressing issue facing policymakers today.
"Talk is cheap," he said. "It's great when we have a good rhetoric around the issue, but we need to take the actions that you are taking today and inspire the people in this building . . . We need to do something and it is long overdue."
Rep. Frank Smizik (D-Norfolk), chairman of the Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture, said the future of environmental policy will depend on the 2008 presidential election.
"There will be no federal legislation until there is a change of leadership in the executive branch," he said.
Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ President the Rev. Jim Antal said leaders today were called by unborn generations to leave the world like the Biblical Eden.
He compared the environmental "revolution" to the American Revolution, and said sacrifice and generosity are necessary to its success.
"[These] are the values of every faith perspective the world over," he said.
SouthCoastToday.com
Activists say water pipes need as much repair as roads
By Steve LeBlanc
January 14, 2008
BOSTON — After years of listening to dire warnings about the future of Massachusetts' crumbling roads and bridges, clean water activists are ringing an alarm bell of their own.
Like those pushing for a fix for the state's transportation troubles, clean water activists say repairing and maintaining the state's water pipes, storage tanks and treatment plants comes with a big repair bill — about $8 billion over the next 20 years.
And they have dire warnings of their own about what continued neglect could bring.
While the threat of a system-wide meltdown is unlikely, they say the fiscal pressures on cities and towns is making it harder for them to keep up with regular maintenance — making the prospect of broken or damaged pipes more likely.
In 2006, water departments across the state reported nearly 2,000 leaks that lost more than 250 million gallons of water.
"In older cities with older pipes, you are going to have pipes that are breaking more often, that are clogging more often," said John McNabb, manager of the Drinking Water Program with the advocacy group Clean Water Action. "It's a direct public health issue. It's an affordability issue. It's a public safety issue."
The group released a report this week detailing the extent of the problem, and calling for lawmakers to pass a bill this year creating a special commission to look at the issue and recommend ways to come up with the needed money.
They have they work cut out for them.
Beacon Hill is still grappling with a bombshell report released last year by a special commission studying the extent of the state's transportation troubles.
That report concluded the state will need to bring in an extra $15 to $19 billion over the next 20 years just to maintain its current system of roads, bridges, subways and commuter rails.
That's not counting any money for new projects, like a proposed commuter rail link from Boston to New Bedford and Fall River.
That report caught the attention of lawmakers, in part because of its recommendation that the state consider solving the transportation funding crunch in part by hiking the gas tax by 11.5-cents and creating a new 5-cent per mile highway "user fee."
Those ideas met with swift opposition, but Gov. Deval Patrick has proposed divvying up the estimated $450 million that could be generated by his three casino plan between transportation upgrades and property tax relief.
Clean water advocates are also hoping to grab the attention of top state officials — although they acknowledge that unlike concrete-shedding bridges and pothole-strewn roads, water and sewer pipes are largely out of sight and mind, until one breaks.
"Every time you brush your teeth in the morning, you don't think where the water comes from, but we have to," said state Rep. Jeffrey Sanchez, D-Boston.
Advocates say there is no statewide compilation of water main miles, or of water main breaks in Massachusetts. They came up with their estimate of the number of breaks in 2007 by looking at individual reports filed by water districts with state regulators.
Another supporter of the bill, Rep. Frank Smizik, D-Brookline, said the report and the call for a special commission was an attempt, in part, to make sure the issue of clean drinking water isn't washed away by the push to solve the state's transportation troubles.
"We are trying to get in the ballgame," he said. "We've suffered from years of neglect and we have to make that up and now's the time."
That's much the same pitch made by those pushing the state to come to grips with its post-Big Dig transportation landscape — one also marked, they say, by years of neglect.
Michael Widmer, president of the business-backed Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, sat on the commission that outlined the extent of the transportation problem.
Widmer said residents shouldn't have to choose between good roads and clean, safe drinking water.
"These things don't come cheap, and you can ignore them only so long, so in the end the citizens have to pay in some fashion," he said. "It's only a question of when and how much."
The bill to create a special water infrastructure commission has already passed the Senate and is currently before the House Joint Rules Committee.
SouthCoastToday.com
Ocean management supporters rally at Statehouse
By Dave Kibbe
November 15, 2007
BOSTON — Momentum is building in the Massachusetts House of Representatives for an unprecedented ocean management plan that would decide where uses like wind power, tidal energy and liquefied natural gas facilities would be allowed in state waters.
Rep. Frank Smizik, D-Brookline, the House chairman of the Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture Committee, strongly supports the bill, which was filed by Sen. Robert O’Leary, D-Barnstable. It passed the Senate unanimously this fall.
But Rep. Smizik, who spoke in favor of the bill at a Statehouse rally marking “Massachusetts Oceans Day” Thursday, said much work needs to be done to convince the full House.
Thursday’s rally, supported by more than 40 environmental, science and recreational organizations, was part of that effort.
Leon Panetta, a former congressman and chief of staff to President Clinton, was the keynote speaker for Oceans Day. Mr. Panetta led the independent Pew Oceans Commission.
“I think it has to be built,” Rep. Smizik said of House support after speaking at Oceans Day. “Mr. Panetta coming, and others, have helped the speaker understand more about these issues. I think he has a fairly positive attitude toward it. We will start pushing that in January and we will see where it leads. It’s always a question of educating members. A lot of people don’t have oceans in their district.”
There currently is no ocean management or zoning plan.
The legislation would empower Ian Bowles, the secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs, to develop an ocean plan within two years, after suggestions from a 16-member advisory commission and a scientific council. The advisory commission would include representatives of government, environmental organizations and commercial and sport fishing.
Sen. O’Leary worked closely on the bill with Sen. Bruce Tarr, R-Gloucester. The bill was revised last year to clarify that no power would be taken away from the state Division of Marine Fisheries and no new regulations would be imposed on the fishing industry.
Sen. O’Leary credited Senate President Therese Murray, D-Plymouth, with helping get the legislation through the Senate two sessions in a row when it was “at risk.” The House did not vote on it after it passed the Senate late last session.
“The Senate president was consistently supportive and active in that process,” Sen. O’Leary said. “Without that we wouldn’t be here today.”
Rather than hurting commercial fishing, lawmakers said, ocean management would help protect the industry.
“We wanted to make sure the fishing community was particularly part and parcel of this and the decision-making that went into it,” Sen. Murray told the crowd.
While the legislation was inspired by the controversy over Cape Wind, it would not affect the proposal for 130 wind turbines in Nantucket Sound because it is in federal waters, more than 3 miles from the coast.
However, it could affect a proposed wind farm in Buzzards Bay, which is in state-controlled waters.
Cape Wind is satisfied that the bill is neutral toward the project, which is under federal review. Rep. Smizik wore a button calling for approval of Cape Wind as he spoke in favor of the legislation.
“I look forward to seeing this bill moving forward in the House,” he told the crowd.
More than 40 organizations came to the Statehouse to support the legislation, including Mass Audubon, the Conservation Law Foundation and the Ocean Conservancy. The New England Aquarium had a life-size, blow-up right whale in front of the Statehouse, and clam chowder and a raw bar were available inside.
Mr. Bowles, Sen. Marc R. Pacheco, D-Taunton, Rep. Robert M. Koczera, D-New Bedford, and Rep. Susan Peake, D-Provincetown, were among the officials who urged passage of the bill.
“This act would provide the most comprehensive approach in the nation in dealing with ocean planning,” Mr. Panetta told them. “I think it will set a precedent for the rest of the country if we could get this adopted. Your coastline, like many other coastlines, is now facing a maze of conflicting efforts. … If you don’t pass some kind of comprehensive management plan, then the result is chaos.”
The Boston Globe
Global warming opponents demand cuts in carbon emissions
By Stephanie M. Peters, Globe Correspondent | November 4, 2007
Nearly 200 people huddled around three politicians at Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Boston yesterday, rallying to draw attention to the problem of global warming.
The group waved signs, chanted slogans such as "Quit coal, cut carbon, green jobs now," and posed for pictures in the unusual setting.
The blustery, wet weather pushed the activists indoors. But it didn't dampen the gathering, one of five "Step It Up" campaign events planned statewide to draw attention to what organizers called "the intense concern of ordinary Americans and the leadership vacuum in Washington" on the issue of climate change.
"The public is starting to shift on this issue," said Lilah Glick, global warming coordinator for Clean Water Action, one of the rally's cosponsors. "Now it's about trying to shift the leadership."
Participants called for Congress to act to create 5 million "green" jobs, reduce carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050, and ban coal plant construction.
Global warming is an issue that affects the economy and national security, said US Representative John Tierney, who urged the crowd to "keep it nonpartisan."
"You don't have to pick a party. Pick a candidate who can get it done," the Democrat said.
Tierney is coauthor of The Green Jobs Act of 2007, which was incorporated into an energy bill over the summer. The legislation would make $125 million a year available across the country to train workers for jobs in the clean-energy sector. He was joined at the rally by state Representative Frank Smizik, a Brookline Democrat who chairs the Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture, and state Senator Marc Pacheco, a Taunton Democrat who was honored recently by environmental activists for his work fighting global warming.
Kevin and Deborah Block-Schwenk , residents of the city's Allston-Brighton section, said it was the second such rally they had attended this year.
"Sadly . . . we don't respond to a crisis until it hits us right between the eyes," Kevin Block-Schwenk said. "I expect, ironically, as things get progressively worse, we'll get more people at events like this." Glick said she was pleased with the turnout given the weather. Had the weather been good, two to three times as many people might have attended, she said.
In Concord, Senator John Kerry spoke yesterday to participants at the Energy Revolution Rally in Minute Man National Historic Park. In Montpelier, scores of people gathered at the State House to urge Governor Jim Douglas to provide leadership to help Vermonters reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. Other rallies were held nationwide, activists said.
The Boston Globe
Balancing shoreline interests
By Frank Smizik and Salvatore F. DiMasi
August 4, 2007
MASSACHUSETTS is known as the Bay State for good reason.
Those who live, work, and vacation here owe much to the natural beauty of harbors, bays, rivers, wetlands, and ponds, and these riches must be protected by all of us -- the caretakers for future generations.
Last week, the House of Representatives passed legislation that recasts how we should approach the economic development and environmental questions regarding the shoreline.
Though the Senate and Governor Deval Patrick have slightly differing views, we urge them to join on to our compromise -- which, more than other drafts, strikes the delicate balance between encouraging the robust building boom Boston is experiencing with the environmental protections that our land -- and citizens -- demand.
In February, the Supreme Judicial Court forced this debate by ruling that the Department of Environmental Protection did not have the authority to apply a streamlined permitting policy for tidelands that have been filled in and were landlocked by a public way, exempting them from a full licensing review even though they remain covered by the tidelands law, Chapter 91.
The court decision created uncertainty in the licensing process and gave the Legislature 120 days to validate the regulations or to change them. We accepted this as a challenge to improve the process and give more input to communities impacted by development.
We created a compromise that gives the governor a clearer path for permitting projects and provides the public with a powerful new independent voice in the process. As is necessary for general laws, the House bill looks beyond the immediate problems and establishes a framework for decision-making that will consider the public interest for all future decisions.
This bill builds on the centuries-old legal concept known as the public trust doctrine, which protects public access along the waterfront for the benefits of "fishing, fowling, and navigation." Today, however, public benefit encompasses not just open space, environmental protections, impact on the surrounding community, and improvements to the property but also housing, commerce, and economic development. Broadly defining public benefit ensures that the public interest is considered in each significant waterfront development.
Establishing an office whose sole responsibility is to determine fairly and independently the public benefit in waterfront development protects the interests of all Massachusetts citizens to enjoy the state's shoreline. That is exactly what this bill has done.
Simultaneous with the DEP and Massachusetts Environmental Protection Act review, the bill would allow a newly established director of Tidelands and Great Ponds, as guardian of the "public trust," to review the public benefits of the development. This would include the impact on the neighborhood and the benefits to commerce such as leases, easement payments, and town or city permits.
Following public input and staff investigation, the director would send a report to DEP that would become part of the record.
The intent is to give the public more access to agency decision-making. This would help protect the environment and improve the quality of development of tidelands. The new director and staff would help supplement an understaffed DEP and help them make better decisions, not supplant DEP authority.
Our bill also guarantees title certainty for developers and owners in the more than 4,000 acres of land -- three-quarters of which is in Boston -- that was thrown into doubt by the SJC decision.
There are many ways to address a particular problem. The House has taken its course, and we look forward to continuing to work with the Senate and Governor Patrick in making the best possible law to protect our tidelands. Massachusetts has an opportunity to show the rest of the nation that we can balance protection of the priceless natural resources with the powerful market forces that continue to attract businesses, people, and tourists here.
We believe that with increased public benefits discussion, Massachusetts will be able to do an even better job of keeping our legacy as the Bay State.
Frank Smizik, of Brookline, represents the 15th Norfolk District and is House chairman of the Committee on the Environment, Natural Resources, and Agriculture. Salvatore F. DiMasi, of the North End, represents the Third Suffolk District and is speaker of the House.
The Boston Globe
Right to fresh air sought for patients
By Felicia Mello
July 8, 2007
It is not much -- just a 6-foot-by-12-foot space with a few chairs, a barbecue, and pots of basil and pink flowers. But to 47-year-old Gigi Alley, the garden she has built on the porch of her Medford home symbolizes everything she did not have during seven weeks of constant confinement in a psychiatric unit at Cambridge Hospital.
"Even in times of real distress, I can find moments of calm just by listening to the wind blow in the trees and seeing squirrels," said Alley, who suffers from depression and multiple personality disorder.
That is the idea behind a bill pending in the Legislature that would require psychiatric hospitals to provide patients like Alley with a right long enjoyed by prison inmates: daily access to the outdoors.
Dubbed the Fresh Air Bill and sponsored by Senator Patricia Jehlen, a Democrat from Somerville, and Representative Frank Smizik, a Democrat of Brookline, the legislation has met with opposition from medical centers and raised questions about the proper balance between patients' autonomy and doctors' clinical judgment.
"It's not that we're against fresh air, it's that we cannot guarantee safety," said David Matteodo, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of Behavioral Health Systems, which represents the majority of the state's private psychiatric institutions. "Many patients are in the hospital because they are dangerous to themselves and to others."
Massachusetts Department of Mental Health policy states that all public psychiatric hospitals should allow residents outdoors as long as it is safe.
But the guideline does not apply to the state's 64 private facilities, which range from high-rise, acute-care units in congested urban areas to a working farm in Western Massachusetts where people with severe psychiatric disabilities shovel hay and make cheese.
Consumers of mental health services and their advocates packed a hearing late last month before the Joint Committee on Mental Health and Substance Abuse, which is considering the bill, to make their case that sequestering patients indoors amounts to discrimination. It will be months before the bill reaches the floor of the Legislature -- if it ever does.
"I think in a way this is one of the last frontiers of the civil rights movement," Jonathan Dosick, founder of the Coalition for Fresh Air Rights, said in an interview afterward.
"Psychiatric patients in the larger picture are not being treated with decency and humanity. In our laws, prison inmates are guaranteed time outside per day, and then to have this population of people who are often labeled as violent and unstable and don't enjoy this right really angers a lot of people," he said.
Proponents and critics of the bill differ on how many hospitals would be affected. Matteodo says only two of the hospitals in his group completely ban fresh air breaks.
But many allow them infrequently, only when enough staff is available, or for patients who behave well, smoke, or stay for long periods. Advocates say such restrictions can make it all but impossible for residents to get outside.
"I have talked to parents who are getting calls from an adult child in a psychiatric unit who is told they cannot go outside because they don't smoke," said Dori Hutchinson , director of services for the Boston University Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation. "Their child takes up smoking just to be able to go outside. To me that's outrageous."
Mary Milgrom, senior director of nursing at Cambridge Hospital, where Alley stayed, said the hospital works to provide patients with fresh air on a case-by-case basis and is currently reviewing its policies.
While few researchers have explored whether being outdoors speeds recovery, many mental health professionals see the idea as common sense -- especially practitioners of ecopsychology, a budding field that examines how the natural environment influences human behavior.
"People without psychiatric conditions seem to cope better and feel more hopeful when they have access to even a small amount of landscaping," Frances Kuo , an ecopsychologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, wrote in a letter to the committee. "Why, then, should people in a more vulnerable state be subjected to an often barren, institutional setting?"
A century ago, wealthy eccentrics flocked to sanatoriums in the countryside to recover from stress, while poor patients spent years on state farms where they got plenty of exercise even as the government exploited their labor.
In recent years, however, advances in medication and shrinking insurance payments have led to shorter hospital stays, usually indoors in urban environments.
With an average length of stay of nine days, some private hospitals argue, fresh air becomes less of an issue.
Administrators worry they will have to construct costly outdoor courtyards for patients, or else parade them through the hospital to reach the street, potentially endangering them and the public.
"We would never want in the name of fresh air to jeopardize a life," said Dr. John Herman , director of clinical services for the psychiatry department at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Those arguments do not convince patients like Alley, who called the unit where she stayed from February to April as insular as a space station.
Even the window blinds were kept closed at all times, she said.
Returning to the outside world was so jarring, she said, that every sound grated on her nerves.
"It's easy to feel freakish and different when you're locked inside," she said. "If I had been able to go out, it would have made me feel less disconnected."
State House News Service
Accord on mercury bill reached on Beacon Hill
By Jim O'Sullivan
June 29, 2006
A compromise bill banning products that contain mercury emerged from House and Senate negotiations Monday, as legislators look to hold manufacturers liable for disposing of products in cars and lamps that contain the toxic element.
Under the bill, new cars and trucks with mercury-added vehicle switches could potentially not be sold in Massachusetts after Jan. 1, 2007 nor could the switches be sold separately. To avoid the ban, automobiles with mercury-added switches would need replacements with "a non-mercury alternative." But if such alternatives weren't available commercially, the vehicles would be exempt from the ban. The bill prohibits the sale of a host of other products containing mercury, including barometers, thermometers and gastrointestinal tubes.
Rep. Douglas Petersen, D-Marblehead, one of the House sponsors of the original mercury bill, said the compromise remains true to his intent and that of other early supporters.
"The only thing that differs is the amount of time which car manufactures have to get rid of the mercury switches, giving them two years now rather than one," Petersen said.
The bill alleviates environmental and health concerns, and could prod economic growth for mercury recycling, said Rep. Frank Smizik, D-Brookline, House chairman of the Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture and the lead House conferee on a six-member conference committee that filed its report Monday afternoon. Aides said all six conferees would sign the conference report.
Business groups criticized the legislation, calling some of the manufacturing and disposal requirements "unprecedented."
"No other state has done this. This is not something that other states have done and Massachusetts thinks is a good idea," said Mark Kohorst, senior manager of environment, health, and safety at the National Electrical Manufacturers Association. He said, "The way Massachusetts wants to do it, it's unprecedented, it's inefficient, and it's going to cause the prices to go up."
Crushing cars for recycling or junking would be illegal without first removing mercury-added components, according to the bill.
Petersen also acknowledged another change made to the bill which would not necessarily take fluorescent light bulb companies "out of the loop", but would, however, make them not "directly responsible."
Through a memorandum of understanding between the Department of Environmental Protection and mercury product makers, lamp manufacturers could offset non-compliance by sending $1 million in grants to cities and towns annually, intended to shield local governments from mercury-related recycling and disposal costs. The producers of other goods - button-cell batteries, cars and removable mercury-added lamp and formulated products - would not be covered under that grant provision. Auto makers would have until August 2007 to come up with a disposal plan for mercury-added switches removed from end-of-life vehicles; a 90 percent capture rate is required, with manufacturers responsible for paying $3 to dismantlers or recyclers for each switch.
The Department of Environmental Protection would oversee compliance, and manufacturers and recyclers would have to provide the DEP with the number of end-of-life vehicles containing mercury-added switches. Through an alternate plan, manufacturers could duck the $3 fee by designing their own plan that must achieve a 50 percent capture rate by Dec. 31, 2007 and 90 percent by Dec. 31, 2008. Non-compliance by that point would subject the manufacturers to the $3 charge. After a year under the alternate program, the auto manufacturer could borrow a plan from another state that meets the 90 percent threshold. Federally required mercury products and those deemed medically necessary are exempt from the prohibition. Fluorescent light sales are permitted under the bill, and Smizik said Monday that authors hope to encourage their use, but for consumers to dispose of them properly.
Opponents charge that the bill is impractical, would lead to higher consumer costs, and would actually reduce energy efficiency. Mercury-added lamps, they say, contain little mercury and are energy efficient. And products like TVs, computer monitors and office equipment that contain LCD screens are the technology of the future, but the legislation would force manufacturers to submit plans to collect the products - an enormous undertaking, opponents say. They say national reform, mandated at the federal level, would be more effective, and call the bill unclear in its implementation instructions.
But at a State House press conference in March, parents of disabled children said the environmental and health benefits of cutting down on mercury in the air and water outweighed the bill's negatives. They said added costs would be recouped in long-term health care and special education savings. Smizik calls the bill, which has a little over four weeks to become law as the session winds down, "something that we've done responsibly, and we think will help both the industry and the people concerned about the effects of mercury." He also said he envisions retailers providing recycling bins to ease product disposal for consumers, and businesses sprouting around the mandated recycling practices. "We'd essentially be creating a whole new industry," Smizik said during an interview in his office last week.
The bill has been the subject of intense lobbying this session, business groups in opposition and environmentalists and public health advocates in favor. Kohorst said he'd been "taken aback" by some of the rhetoric during the House floor debate.
"There seems to be some... pretty strong sentiment against a couple of the manufacturers in this state who in fact employ a lot of people and are very responsible corporate citizens," Kohorst said. "But there have been some things mentioned, in [legislative] sessions and so forth, that there seems to be some hostilities against these companies." DEP would be responsible for a campaign to educate people about the new requirements.
As far as Petersen is concerned it is now just "a matter of waiting to see when it makes it to the floor."
"I think it will be a near, if not completely, unanimous vote [in the bill's favor]," Petersen said.
Mass High Tech: The Journal of New England Technology
Bill proposes to boost oversight, control over biosafety labs
Frank Smizik
June 23, 2006
Massachusetts is seeking to be at the forefront of biotech research, medical advances and innovative technology. As a state legislator, I want to support the scientific work being done in Massachusetts, which has roughly 20 biosafety "level three" (BSL3) laboratories, and a BSL4 facility is sited for Boston. As safe and secure as such laboratories are, there is always the threat of a release. Our goal is for the state to ensure the security and the safety of all facilities in Massachusetts, particularly Level 3 and 4 laboratories.
Read the entire article
The Boston Globe (editorial)
Capping the greenhouse
June 4, 2006
FOR MORE than two years, the Romney administration led a regional initiative to put limits on the greenhouse gas emissions of the area's electric power producers. But just as the other states were coming to an agreement on this mini-Kyoto late last year, Governor Mitt Romney decided to pull out. Now a group of environmentally minded legislators is backing a bill that would re-enlist Massachusetts in this effort by other Northeast states to slow the pace of global warming.
The agreement, which seven states accepted , would reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power generators 10 percent by 2020. It would use a market-based mechanism that should appeal to Romney's entrepreneurial spirit. A cap would be placed on all the emissions the industry could produce, and power producers could buy and sell among themselves allowances to emit more than any single firm is permitted.
The effect is to put a premium on producers finding ways through renewable energy or other means to generate electricity while emitting less carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas. Romney balked when the states in the initiative refused to place a lid on the value of the tradable allowances. The other states feared a lid would cramp the market's ability to force gains in carbon-reduced power generation. While Romney worried about the plan increasing utility rates, his own Division of Energy Resources did a study showing that it could reduce rates if money produced by allowance sales is invested in renewable energy and conservation.
Critics of the regional plan have a point when they argue that its overall reduction in greenhouse gas emissions would be a tiny fraction of the US total. But the regional initiative sets a precedent in demonstrating that Americans can take political action on global warming, even while Congress and the Bush administration prefer to hope the problem will just go away. An additional advantage of the regional initiative is that it could spur Northeast companies to become worldwide leaders in devising ways to develop renewable sources of power or to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in plants that use fossil fuels, especially coal.
Sponsors of the bill that would put Massachusetts into the initiative include Senators Pamela Resor of Acton and Robert O'Leary of Barnstable and Representative Frank Smizik of Brookline. The measure deserves veto-proof majorities to overcome a possible veto by Romney. He, by the way, should be reminded that not all Republicans considering runs for the White House oppose curbs on carbon emissions. Senator John McCain, the leader in GOP polls, has long backed a national version of the regional initiative.
The Boston Globe
THE POLITICAL TRAIL - Kennedy's wind farm move yields local heat
By Michael Jonas | May 28, 2006
Two months ago US Senator Edward Kennedy had Beacon Hill buzzing as he swooped down to address lawmakers at the State House for the first time in his 44-year career.
But a large contingent of the same body that welcomed the state's senior senator with reverence and awe as he pledged his support for passage of landmark healthcare legislation is now giving Kennedy something he is utterly unaccustomed to receiving from Bay State Democrats: a cold shoulder.
A group of 69 state legislators, led by Brookline state Representative Frank Smizik, earlier this month signed a letter to Congress opposing a Kennedy-backed amendment that would grant Governor Mitt Romney unilateral authority to kill the electricity-generating wind farm proposed for Nantucket Sound.
Kennedy's effort to sink the project with an amendment tacked on to a pending Coast Guard authorization bill has met with opposition from fellow Democrats in Congress and drawn the wrath of his usual allies in the environmental movement. But the heavy weather now coming at him at home highlights just what a raw nerve Kennedy has hit with his stand.
"We've listened to the arguments," Smizik said of the proposal to site 130 wind turbines off the coast of Cape Cod. "We believe it's good for Massachusetts."
Three-dollar-a-gallon gasoline prices may be adding fuel to the fire, but even without that accelerant, there seemed to be strong support for efforts to turn renewal-energy rhetoric into watt-generating reality. A recent State House News Service poll reported that more than 70 percent of Massachusetts residents support the Cape Wind project.
Smizik, the House chairman of the Committee on Environment, Natural Resources, and Agriculture, said the wind farm project could put Massachusetts in the forefront of innovation in renewable energy, making it a potential boon to job development as well a source of clean energy.
He said handing veto power over the project to Romney, who, like Kennedy, opposes the wind farm, "undermines all that has been done" in the state and federal regulatory review process to date.
Kennedy has charged that the Boston company developing the wind farm benefited from provisions of an energy bill Congress passed last year that exempt it from certain new mandates for wind projects.
"We had an opportunity to right a wrong," he told the Globe last month in defending the amendment.
But Smizik says the wrong would come from short-circuiting a process that has been underway for five years. "It negates the public input that's been involved in the project," said Smizik.
Along with Smizik, 12 other legislators, all Democrats, representing City Weekly communities signed the letter to Congress: Senator Jarrett Barrios ; Representative Gloria Fox; Representative Kevin Honan Senator Patricia Jehlen; Representative Liz Malia; Representative Michael Moran; Representative Denise Provost; Representative Michael Rush; Representative Byron Rushing; Representative Jeffrey Sanchez; Representative Carl Sciortino; and Representative Martin Walsh.
On Thursday, Kennedy backed away from his insistence on gubernatorial veto power over the project, proposing instead that the Coast Guard commandant be given final say over the project.
Kennedy, whose family compound in Hyannis Port sits just miles from the proposed offshore wind farm, has been accused of abandoning his pro-environment politics in favor of a classic bit of NIMBY self-interest.
The environmental group Greenpeace USA has mocked Kennedy in television ads that show him, in cartoon figure, literally gaveling down one wind farm turbine after another.
The letter from state lawmakers doesn't even mention Kennedy by name. But Smizik, a liberal Democrat who says he has helped gather nominating signatures for Kennedy, says he's well aware that he and his colleagues have drawn an uncomfortable line in the sandbar with their stand on the wind project.
"It's very tough to think about being on the opposite side as Senator Kennedy," said Smizik. "I still regard him as someone who has done such marvelous things throughout his career. He's an icon, really."
Michael Jonas can be reached at jonas@globe.com. |
Kingston Mariner
Legislators meet with South Shore municipal waste managers
May 26, 2006
The South Shore Recycling Cooperative (SSRC) hosted a Legislative Breakfast that packed the room at Cameron's on the Green on May 12. Representatives Tom O'Brien and Kathleen Teahan, and Monica Mullin from Sen. Therese Murray's office met with municipal solid waste managers. SSRC Chairman Merle Brown of Cohasset opened the event, and introduced guest speaker Representative Frank Smizik of Brookline, the Chairman of the Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture Committee.
Smizik acknowledged that recycling and solid waste management are pressing issues. Noting that "the financial burden of managing 300,000 tons per year of electronics waste has been heavy on municipalities," his committee has sent the Electronics Takeback Bill to the Senate for a vote.
Smizik said is encouraged that House Speaker DiMasi takes environmental issues seriously, and recently brought the first environmental bill in 6 years to a vote. The bill restricts the sale of products containing mercury to those for which there is no non-mercury substitute, and requires that manufacturers establish recycling programs for their products. Details are still being negotiated with the manufacturers, but "it is imperative that we keep mercury out of our water and air."
SSRC Executive Director Claire Sullivan played one of 30 radio ads that have been airing on local radio since November, and displayed a front page article from the day before that was the result of an SSRC press release about the $2.6 million cost of wasting paper on the South Shore in 2005. Noting the importance of state grants for such efforts, she outlined the Cooperative's legislative priorities, including increases in the recycling budget for state leadership in waste reduction efforts, updating the Bottle Bill and end of life product responsibility by manufacturers.
SSRC Vice Chairman Steven Herrmann of Hanover recounted the waxing and waning enthusiasm with which recycling has been embraced by the public.
"We seem to be reverting to a more environmentally and socially conscious time, and as a result the environment is getting better, thanks to people like John McNabb". He presented McNabb with a plaque commemorating his twelve year involvement with the SSRC and its predecessor organization, the South Shore Regional Refuse Disposal Planning Board. McNabb was instrumental in the creation of the SSRC as an independent government entity, and served as secretary from 1998-2005.
McNabb presented state Sen. Robert Hedlund, R-Weymouth, with the SSRC's fifth "Environmental Hero" award, noting his role in the creation and initial funding of the Cooperative and his support of solutions to the growing burden of solid waste management issues on member towns. Hedlund has sponsored budget amendments to increase funding for recycling, a bill requiring retailers to take back unused non-latex paint, which currently costs municipalities thousands to accept as hazardous waste, the Electronic Waste Takeback bill noted by Rep. Smizik, and the Updated Bottle Bill.
In his acceptance speech, Hedlund noted the prevalence of Boy Scout leaders and Eagle Scouts among the leadership of the SSRC, in addition to himself and Rep. O'Brien, and reminded us of the Boy Scout rule to "Leave the campsite a better place than you found it." He recalled picking the recyclables out of his parents' trash in the sixties. "I feel passionate about these issues, and want to thank the South Shore Recycling Cooperative for this honor and their continued efforts in promoting recycling," he said.
Hedlund joins Rep. Kathleen Teahan (D-Whitman), Rep. Tom O'Brien (D-Kingston), Rep. Robert Koczera (D-New Bedford), and Rep. Mark Carron (D-Southbridge) who were also named "Environmental Heroes" since 2000.
The SSRC helps its 15 member towns save money and to improve recycling and hazardous waste management through outreach, advocacy, regional contracts and waste reduction strategies. Member towns include Abington, Cohasset, Duxbury, Hanover, Hingham, Holbrook, Hull, Kingston, Marshfield, Norwell, Plymouth, Rockland, Scituate, Weymouth and Whitman.
Cape Cod Times
69 State Legislators urge defeat of Anti-wind farm Amendment
May 15, 2006
Read the full article and letter to Congress (PDF)
New Bedford Standard-Times
69 Mass. lawmakers petition Congress for Cape wind farm
David Kibbe | May 15, 2006
BOSTON — Sixty-nine
state
legislators
have
signed
a
letter
to
Congress
in
opposition
to
a
proposed
federal amendment that would
allow
the
Massachusetts
governor
to
veto
the
Nantucket
Sound
wind
farm.
The
letter
was
circulated
through
the
200-member
Legislature
by
Rep.
Frank
Smizik,
a
Brookline
Democrat
who
co-chairs
the
Environment,
Natural
Resources
and
Agriculture
Committee.
"The message we intend to send is this is a time that we have to start thinking about alternative energy," Smizik said. "We're relying on dirty power plants when we have peak use, and we have to get away from that. We are having a climate change issue around the country, and we have to be the example for doing something right."
Legislators
who signed
the letter
included Democrats
and Republicans
from cities
and towns
across the
state, including
five from
the SouthCoast
area: Reps.
Robert M.
Koczera, D-New
Bedford; Michael
J. Rodrigues,
D-Westport; Robert
Correia, D-Fall
River; David
B. Sullivan,
D-Fall River;
and Patricia
A. Haddad,
D-Somerset.
"I think there is a process in place and the process is working for a source of energy that I think we should not ignore or downplay," Koczera said. "There are people, for reasons of aesthetics and really nothing else, who are opposing it."
Koczera
said giving
the governor
a veto
would "effectively kill a process and prevent a source of energy that I think would be benign and beneficial."
Only
one
Cape
legislator
signed
onto
the
letter,
Rep.
Matthew
Patrick,
D-Falmouth.
Patrick
said
the
ongoing
federal
and
state
review
of
Cape
Wind's
application,
involving
18
agencies
and
a
number
of
public
hearings
over
a
four-year
period,
has "documented the positive benefits of the project in direct contradiction to the allegations from opponents."
Cape
Wind
is
proposing
130
wind
turbines
that
would
provide
the
electric
grid
with
the
equivalent
of
three-quarters
of
the
Cape
and
islands'
energy
needs.
"Let the process go forward, and if Cape Wind survives based on its merits, it should not be subject to the arbitrary whims of the governor," Patrick said.
But
Audra Parker,
assistant executive
director of
the Alliance
to Protect
Nantucket Sound,
which is
trying to
stop the
wind farm,
said the
two-page letter
that was
sent to
state legislators
was misleading
on a
number of
counts.
For
instance,
the
letter
stated
that
the
FAA
has
given
the
project
a "green light" and "will be able to comment further." However, the letter does not explain that the FAA is conducting a study on the effects of wind turbines on air traffic control systems, Parker said.
Parker
said
the
letter
also
does
not
mention
the
Environmental
Protection
Agency's
criticism
of
the
draft
environmental
report
prepared
for
the
wind
farm
by
the
U.S.
Army
Corps
of
Engineers.
"If you look at the signatures, with the exception of Matt Patrick, there is no one on this that represents the Cape and islands delegation," Parker said. "The constituents that they represent that will bear the direct cost of this project."
Sen.
Robert O'Leary,
and Reps.
Demetrius Atsalis,
D-Hyannis; Cleon
Turner, D-Dennis;
Eric Turkington,
D-Falmouth; and
Shirley Gomes,
R-Harwich, have
written to
Congress in
support of
the federal
amendment.
The
amendment,
proposed
by
U.S.
Sen.
Ted
Stevens,
R-Alaska,
would
give
Gov.
Mitt
Romney,
an
avowed
opponent
of
the
wind
farm,
the
opportunity
to
kill
the
project.
The
amendment
has
been
backed
by
Sen.
Edward
M.
Kennedy,
who
was
not
named
in
the
letter.
Cape
Wind
supporters
are
planning
a
demonstration
outside
Kennedy's
Boston
office
today.
"He's an icon that we all look up to," Smizik said. "I'm
not happy being on the other side of an issue,
but it's not about him. There were a few
people who didn't want to sign the letter
because Senator Kennedy was on the other
side. People were looking at the issue, not
Senator Kennedy."
Boston's Weekly Dig
SKY TO GET LESS POISONOUS
With Romney off doing something else, legislature steps up on greenhouse gas pact
Paul McMorrow | May 10, 2006
The Legislature’s Joint Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture failed to attract any headlines in the local press last week. The action the committee took—passing a wonky enviro bill off to the full Legislature—had none of the sex appeal of a scramble for the Senate presidency. Or a Boston City Council pay hike, for that matter.
Sorry to wake everybody up, but last week’s Environment Committee vote may well mark a political sea change on two important fronts.
For the past couple years, the Romney administration had been a key player in negotiating the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI—behind every sexy government program lies an unwieldy acronym).
RGGI is a compact between Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states, in which members cap, and eventually slash, the amount of carbon dioxide their power plants produce. Plants buy and sell pollution credits in a market-based system; efficient plants sell any pollutant tonnage they don’t use, older plants that can’t afford to overhaul emissions filters buy pollution credits, and overall emissions still drop.
This past December—just days before the RGGI compact was to be signed—Romney pulled out. Now, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware are forging ahead with the country’s first multi-state compact to reduce greenhouse gases, and Massachusetts is standing on the sidelines.
Not for long, though. Most non-assholes read Romney’s sudden RGGI abdication the same way they read his health insurance line-item veto and his boner for abstinence-only sex ed: It’s not about Massachusetts policy, but Republican presidential politics. Business-regulation fetishes are about as popular in South Carolina as John McCain’s black baby. Romney has clearly moved on.
And so has the Massachusetts Legislature, which brought RGGI back from the dead last week. With that action, the sometimes-august body has finally shown a willingness to go over the Stormin’ Mormon’s well-coiffed head, and govern the state in his absence.
Only the governor can officially bring Massachusetts into the RGGI compact, but the Environment Committee’s vote last week did the next best thing: It will force the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to meet all of RGGI’s standards.
“We can’t necessarily join without the governor, but he’s going to be gone soon,” explains Rep. Frank Smizik, who co-chairs the environment committee with Senator Pamela Resor. He and Resor co-authored the RGGI bill. “I hope we can move this forward, so the next governor can join up and keep moving in the right direction. It’s up to us to do the most we can to control emissions.”
The bill, which orders DEP to comply with RGGI, would seem to fly in the face of power separation; it’s up to the governor, not the Legislature, to draft and dictate policy to executive departments. However, environmentalists and legislators have clearly had their fill of Romney, and they’re not thinking twice about this power play. And if you enjoy not being cooked to death under a toxic cloud of carbon dioxide, that’s probably a good thing.
“Frankly, the governor decided a long time ago that he was done being a leader in Massachusetts,” says Cyndi Roy, the state Democratic spokeswoman. Roy describes the administration’s environmental record as “abysmal, if not nonexistent.”
All three Democrats vying to replace Romney support formally joining RGGI, and the Resor-Smizik bill would ease this process mightily. Kerry Healey has famously waffled on the subject (her campaign did not return calls for comment), but we suspect Christy Mihos’s dog is a staunch environmentalist.
Seth Kaplan, the Conservation Law Foundation’s Clean Energy and Climate Change program director, likens the current RGGI push to the Legislature’s adoption of California’s emissions standards in the ’90s. RGGI “is one of the most important climate efforts in the US,” he says, “and it’s shameful that Massachusetts isn’t part of it. It’s very, very important.”
That importance, Smizik explains, lies in showing that emissions-capping programs are viable nationally—both economically and environmentally. “It’s not symbolic. What this region is doing is critical. Maybe we can help get something going at the national level. We have to show that it works.”
“RGGI has become the hot topic in terms of climate change,” Resor says. “For Massachusetts not to participate in this first-in-the-nation step would reflect badly on this commonwealth.”
The Boston Globe
It's possible to be clean, green, and profitable
By Paul R. Epstein and Frank I. Smizik
April 21, 2006
THE CLIMATE is changing; we know that. And the change is caused by global warming from burning fossil fuels. It's time we turned to solutions, and New England can take some bold steps.
Many forces are lining up to drive a change in energy policies. Oil and gas prices are climbing; conflicts in supply regions are multiplying. Oil will run out at some point, and climate volatility is sending shivers throughout insurance and investment communities.
Insurers, banks, and pension and mutual funds face new, huge, and uncertain risks. Hurricane Katrina, which spread misery, disease, and social disruption, marks a turning point. As insurers and coastal communities brace for a third consecutive dreadful storm season -- projected by all four of this nation's hurricane prediction centers -- the unmanageable is no longer unimaginable.
The financial sector is the central nervous system of the global economy. It is feeling the pain of catastrophic weather events around the world, and its signals can ripple through economies and affect public policies that can enable a real shift in investments.
Disaster damages -- overwhelmingly weather-related -- rose exponentially in the past two decades. Before 1990, annual losses were about $4 billion a year, with $400 million insured. Last year, losses were $225 billion, with $83 billion insured. That is a two-hundredfold increase in payouts. More extremes are hitting the United States, Europe, and Japan.
Some of the losses are because of increases in coastal populations, real estate prices, and insurance penetration. And there are more frequent and intense extremes of all types and novel events, such as hurricanes hitting Brazil, Spain, and Portugal -- areas that never considered buying hurricane insurance.
Insurers and reinsurers are reacting. The first response is defensive: higher premiums, wider exclusions, and hedging their bets. But the largest companies, like Swiss Re, Munich Re, and A.I.G., are also trying to reduce risks and stabilize the climate. Large banks, such as JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Citigroup, are crafting guidelines for investing in nonpolluting industries, and city and state pension funds are reexamining their risks and resetting their compasses to seek new opportunities. Meanwhile, Standard and Poor's, Moody's, and Fitch are reexamining the way they rate companies, deals, real estate, projects, and nations, in light of climate change.
All are taking a hard look at General Motors and Ford, stumbling, in part, because they failed to keep up with consumer demands for smaller, efficient cars. In 2005 venture capitalists invested more than $44 billion in ''smart technologies" for the grid, hybrids, solar, wind, tidal, wave, and geothermal energy. It's becoming cool to be green, and the trick is to be clean, green, and profitable.
In the absence of a national plan, we need local and regional plans for safe, healthy, and economically sustainable measures to address electricity, buildings, and transport. To make this happen, capital markets need seminal policy signals from the public sector.
Here's a suggestion: While we're formulating plans, let's start with ''no-regrets" solutions, with multiple co-benefits, such as ''green buildings." Estimated health and performance savings for workers and students are in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Geothermal systems that tap into the heat of bedrock -- such as at Trinity Church and the new Audubon Center in Boston and the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge -- let buildings derive 80 percent of their heat free. Better insulation, lighting, and ventilation have immediate paybacks. Since 70 percent of Boston's greenhouse gas emissions come from buildings, a change in new construction and retrofitting of old could make a significant difference in energy bills and security, and create jobs. How can we make this happen? Green, healthy, and affordable housing in Boston -- that resonates with Mayor Thomas E. Menino's chief concerns. Green, clean, high-end housing also sounds good.
Cities and states can donate land, provide tax abatements, and invest their pension plans. In the Bay State -- where renewable energy and energy-efficient initiatives have spawned 10,000 new jobs -- the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative can provide seed money. Insurance companies can alter building codes and reduce premiums to reward green developers. Banks and pension and mutual funds can help jump-start infant industries and help others make the shift to healthy practices. Guided by community development corporations, green buildings can use wood from sustainably nurtured forests, nontoxic materials, and biodegradable ''plastics."
California is way ahead on solar and automotives. New England's academic prowess and progressive spirit can help it create another center for clean growth. With the proper incentives, the clean-energy transition can be the engine of growth for the global economy and provide the underpinning for a healthier, safer, and more peaceful world.
Dr. Paul R. Epstein is associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School. Representative Frank I. Smizik, Democrat of Brookline, is chairman of the Joint Committee on Environment, Natural Resources, and Agriculture.
