Greenfield Recorder – My Turn: Not Quabbin’s style, but with my eyes on the prize

The story of the “lost” towns on the Quabbin Reservoir (“Don’t Quabbin-ize us on clean power,” Recorder, May 17) is a sad one, but it raises the question of when an individual or collective should be asked to sacrifice for the greater good. The development of the Quabbin Reservoir met the perceived water needs of a large population of eastern Massachusetts, including the multitudes of immigrants brought here to work in our factories, fields, and infrastructure projects. However, the case of the mass uprooting of four towns in central Mass. and permanently flooding them is a poor analogy to the state-appointed Energy Facility Siting Board (EFSB), which has the power to approve renewable energy infrastructure projects over 100 MW in a new, equal and expedited process.

Yet House Bill 4501 (“Quabbinizer”?) does not go far enough, inexplicably omitting many of the critical recommendations of the Governor’s Commission on Siting and Permitting of Energy Infrastructure (the Commission). If the Commission’s key recommendations were incorporated into the H4501 report:

▪EFSB jurisdiction was granted for projects with a capacity above 25 MW (the threshold is still far too high).

▪ For a capacity of less than 25 MW, a consolidated permit application was created, containing consistent, comprehensive project evaluation criteria – to be used in each of the state’s 351 cities.

■Set quick deadlines for local decisions.

▪Project applicants have been given the opportunity to appeal to the EFSB.

▪ Offered state technical assistance to local boards overwhelmed by the size or complexity of the project.

As climate movement leader Bill McKibben emphasized: “we don’t just live in a community; we also live on a planet where carbon crosses jurisdictional lines soon after it is thrown into the air. Therefore, protecting your own backyard from any change must be weighed against the costs it will impose on the larger whole.

Borders are also crossed by the burdens of oil and gas production and processing, fracking, pipelines and the associated petrochemical smog that currently rests on the shoulders of poor rural and urban communities in the US, as well as the global south, while we twiddle our thumbs about fire salamanders and others “immeasurable” damage to perhaps 75,000 sacred acres of the state’s 2.7 million acres of forest. Should we rely on 351 individual cities to make decisions that will determine whether we successfully meet the EU’s 2050 net zero carbon target? Shouldn’t we rely more heavily on the 7 million Bay Staters or Fortune 500 corporations, acting largely on the basis of self-interest or personal preference, to directly address the existential crises we face?

Many claims about large-scale environmental damage and public safety threats are based on isolated cases of failed solar permits. When the rhetoric and dust settles, after the science has debated the issue, forest ranger objections most often boil down to: Not in my backyard! personal aesthetic preference or concern that a change may harm the property’s value. If you think we can’t sacrifice 2-3% of mass forests (borrow for 30-50 years?) – even though utility-scale solar is faster to install and much cheaper than rooftop solar – you’ll also be inclined to argue that forests are the only proven technology we have that enables affordable carbon sequestration.

This is so far true, but utility-scale solar is so efficient in the form of clean, cheap electrons that the net carbon sequestration capacity of a second-growth forest pales in comparison to the carbon dioxide emissions from the electric grid mitigated by those same acres dedicated to energy solar on a utility scale.

John Pepi is a member of the Mayor of Easthampton’s Energy Advisory Committee, a retired specialist with 35 years of public sector recycling and waste management experience, and holds a Master’s degree in Urban and Environmental Policy from Tufts University.