Top Healey environmental leader calls for reform at Massport

Special to the Independent

In a letter to the state’s top environmental leaders earlier this month, AIR, Inc. (Airport Impact Re­lief, Incorporated) a local community airport envi­ronmental activist group, claimed that Massport, the agency which runs Logan Airport, is not do­ing enough to reduce the airport’s environmental impacts. The group says that state lawmakers creat­ed Massport in the 1950’s to run the airport and pro­mote the economy, but that today Logan has grown to become a mega-airport which causes pollution and traffic impacts. They want the state and Mass­port to do much more to address these impacts.

In a recently concluded review of Logan’s opera­tions, the state’s top rank­ing environmental official Secretary Rebeca Tepper, head of the Executive Of­fice of Energy and Envi­ronmental Affairs (EEA) agreed. Now, she is direct­ing Massport to step up its efforts to reduce Logan’s impacts.

Pointing to rising pas­senger levels and pollu­tion at Logan, the Sec­retary issued a strong directive to Massport to improve its environmental performance. Calling for improved reporting, com­munity engagement, trans­parency, and performance, Tepper turned up the pres­sure on Massport, asking the Authority to address the health, air quality, and community impacts of Lo­gan’s operations.

The Secretary also or­dered Massport to plan additional pollution reduc­tion strategies to address the growth of environmen­tal impacts if passenger or flights outpace forecasts. This idea answers com­munity requests for Mass­port to stop using inaccu­rate planning forecasts.

Secretary Tepper gave Massport an extensive list of actions to take within the coming year to im­prove their future environ­mental performance:

1 Identify additional pollution cutting measures for neighborhoods near the Airport

2 Develop metrics to measure pollution and re­port levels in real-time

3 Identify additional strategies to address in­creased pollution if pas­senger and operations grow more than their fore­casts predict

4 Participate in a work­ing group which her office will create to:

• Identify ways to re­duce Logan’s public health impacts

• Develop air quality monitoring and pollution reduction programs

• Form partnerships to distribute air filters

• Create an idling reduc­tion plan

• Simplify and improve the pollution reporting process

The Secretary also made helpful suggestions about how she would like to see Massport enhance public transparency and tracking of its environmental pro­gramming in their next report by presenting all of their pollution reduc­tion programs in a single table which updates the program’s status and esti­mates their effectiveness. Air, Inc. believes this pro­posed system would make it easier to compare Mass­port’s success at reducing negative environmental impacts with their stated goals. They say this sys­tem could also be used to trigger additional require­ments if impacts aren’t brought down.

“Our technical experts believe this sort of system is totally feasible and we are eager to work with the Secretary’s staff to help Massport implement the full slate of the Secretary’s requirements.” said Chris Marchi, AIR, Inc.’s long­time vice president.

Marchi adds, “If these changes are implement­ed, opportunities for sig­nificant environmental improvements will be un­locked.”

Sonja Tengblad, an East Boston resident and mother who leads the lo­cal chapter of Mothers Out Front, a group which has been leading the call for air quality improve­ments in and around East Boston since 2017, says there’s a lot of work to do, but she’s also eager to get started. She and other volunteers with AIR, Inc. and a coalition of local environmental and com­munity services groups calling itself the Logan Community Clean Air Coalition have been re­searching air quality test­ing and filtration programs since 2017. “Our coalition which includes Mothers Out Front, Neighborhood of Affordable Housing (NOAH), the East Bos­ton Community Soup Kitchen, and many other community-serving not-for-profits, has been work­ing on airport air quality solutions for years,” said Tengblad. ”We’ve moni­tored air quality in homes and classrooms and tested the effectiveness of air pu­rifiers at removing pollut­ants. Our work shows that an air quality improve­ment campaign could protect us from exposure to emissions which cause low birth weight, child­hood asthma, learning disabilities, COPD, heart disease, cancer and many more public health prob­lems. Asthma costs the average family in the US over $3,000 annually. On top of the economic costs, a 2022 Boston College study shows a decrease of 3 IQ points amongst Boston students due to air pollution. We know from decades of research done around Logan that the impacts are far worse the closer you are to the source.”

Tengblad continues, “We are literally stifling every aspect of our chil­dren’s future. We see pat­terns of health impacts amongst residents who have grown up around Lo­gan Airport. To think that our kids might face the same – or worse – should give anyone pause. But Governor Healey has made climate and environ­mental justice a big part of her agenda, and elevat­ing local perspectives and ideas as Secretary Tepper has proposed in state plan­ning processes is the right thing to do. Honestly, it’s about time that Massport starts helping out. This is definitely a big step in the right direction.”

Although activists are encouraged that Secre­tary Tepper has acknowl­edged and embraced their suggestions, Gail Miller, the president of AIR, Inc. urges continued caution. “We’re closer to our goals today. But we’re still miles away.” Miller says that the Secretary’s requirement for Massport to work col­laboratively with commu­nity stakeholders holds incredible promise, but it flies in the face of what Massport has actually done over recent decades. Miller continues, “I whole­heartedly embrace the Secretary’s mandate that a Logan working group be created so that the serious issues be addressed such as mitigating air and noise impacts which are tre­mendous burdens on the communities close to the airport. We need to look at the health costs, not only the perceived economic benefits of the airport.”

When asked about the history of Logan’s treat­ment of adjoining neigh­borhoods, Miller said, “Back in the day, Massport had a horrible reputation. They just smashed their way through the com­munity in the 1960’s and 1970’s, taking hundreds of homes and businesses by eminent domain, leveling three harbor islands and two urban parks including East Boston’s Wood Is­land Park, an 83 acre Olm­sted Park which anchored the northern side of Bos­ton’s Emerald Necklace. They also destroyed 2,000 acres of Boston Harbor to build the airport. Later administrations, mostly in the 1980’s, tried to make amends by conducting sound insulation pro­grams, building parks, and starting programs like Lo­gan Express to cut traffic. And they got a global rep­utation for environmental leadership due to all that. But in the 1990’s state pol­itics shifted and a move­ment to curtail regulation and shrink government took root. Massport aban­doned their commitments and reverted to their old ways. They stopped lis­tening to community per­spectives, stopped pushing the envelope and began to avoid accountability. So today we’re still far from where we need to be.”

John Walkey, Director of Waterfront and Cli­mate Justice Initiatives at GreenRoots, a not-for-profit and long time leader in environmental justice and member of the Lo­gan Community Clean Air Coalition agrees. “It’s been a long road to get to the point where we are today, with the Secretary of EEA requiring Mass­port to finally enter into a true collaboration with surrounding community stakeholders. This is ex­actly what we have always wanted. Now we need to get it done and Massport needs to act in good faith, which is something we haven’t really seen from them for a long time. But they have new leadership over there. The Governor and Massport Board ap­pointed Rich Davey as the new Massport CEO just a few months ago. So we’ll need to give him a chance to turn things around.”

It remains to be seen whether community groups and Massport can make progress. But with Massport’s most recent environmental filing re­porting that passenger and operational levels at Lo­gan are slated to rise sig­nificantly over the next ten years, the state’s environ­mental brass are pushing them together to try, and activists say we can’t af­ford to fail.