CRWA in the News

Recent state budgets show a green lining

By Jon Brodkin, Daily News staff

Metrowest Daily News, Saturday, August 5, 2006

Five years after state officials slashed the budgets of environmental agencies that maintain parks, protect wildlife and enforce laws against polluters, lawmakers have increased environmental spending by $42 million in the last two annual budgets.

The budget increase and new environmental laws regarding mercury and other toxic chemicals caused one advocate to say the legislative session ending July 31 marked the best year for the environment on Beacon Hill in six years.

"We’re still not back to where we were before the cuts in the early part of this decade, but we’re making good progress," said Jim Gomes, who was a high-ranking state environmental official under Gov. Michael Dukakis, and is now president of the Environmental League of Massachusetts.

Other environmental advocates were less positive in assessing the performance of the Legislature and Gov. Mitt Romney.

"If you look over the last several years, nothing was done with bills regarding environmental issues," said Bob Zimmerman, executive director of the Charles River Watershed Association. "To the extent that something is better than nothing, that’s great."

A $15 million increase in the fiscal year that ended one month ago marked an 8.8 percent rise in environmental spending, Gomes said. The budget for the fiscal year that began July 1 includes another $27 million, a raise of 15 percent, he said.

The funding decisions will help offset previous cuts.

The Department of Environmental Protection lost a quarter of its staff in the three years ending in 2004. The Department of Conservation and Recreation, which maintains the state’s parks, suffered budget cuts of 37 percent over roughly the same period.

Gomes is upbeat about a new law that limits the use of mercury in consumer products and another which, he said, requires companies to file reports if their chemical usage exceeds 1,000 pounds a year, instead of 10,000 pounds.

Gomes said environmental advocates also dodged a bullet in the recent legislative session, when lawmakers refused to pass a bill requiring cost-benefit analyses of all new environmental regulations.

Another bad proposal was defeated, he said, when the just-approved expedited permitting law did not include a provision limiting the right to contest building projects on coastal land.

But the same law will allow developers to go ahead with building projects that have been appealed in court without waiting for the OK of a judge or jury. That kind of shift could undo the benefits of increasing spending, said Stephen Meyer of the Sudbury Conservation Commission.

"The real issue of environmental protection isn’t being fought over money," Meyer said. "It’s being fought over principles. And it’s there where I see problems ahead."

Meyer said he believes state policymakers have in general given property rights a higher priority than the public good. And that is making the job of conservation commissions harder, he said.

"Before, there were practical impediments in trying to do a good job and preserve resources," Meyer said. "Now there are these higher-level issues where you don’t get support from higher up."

Zimmerman has a few suggestions for state policymakers. Join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, for one, bringing Massachusetts into an agreement among Northeast states to reduce global warming emissions.

Zimmerman also suggested ending a moratorium that allows developers to ignore new zoning rules until they have been on the books at least eight years. He also said the state should use zoning to encourage dense developments close to public transportation.

 "Given current zoning requirements, you couldn’t build Concord Village in 2006," Zimmerman said. "That’s a big mistake."

The mercury bill, which regulates products including thermostats, certain medical instruments and switches used in electrical circuits, was the first major piece of environmental legislation in six years, according to State Rep. Frank Smizik, D-Brookline, co-chairman of the joint Committee on the Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture.

The unanimous support the bill received indicates lawmakers would be willing to vote for other meaningful environmental rules, Smizik said. The lawmaker wants the state to find a safe place for a liquefied natural gas facility, pass a law regulating waste from computers and other electronic devices, and push for renewable energy like wind and solar power.

But the most important task may be giving environmental agencies the money they need to preserve our natural surroundings, he said.

"Every single division of the Executive Office of Environmental Affairs is underfunded," Smizik said. "By not funding them, we are not protecting the earth and the water and the air, and we’re probably creating health problems in our state."
 

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