Issue Position: Environment

Issue Position

From the shores of the Cape and islands up the coast to the rocky port of Gloucester and across miles of woodlands and lakes to the serene peaks of the Berkshires, Massachusetts is blessed with beautiful natural places. While they give citizens and visitors alike pleasure, they also give us life and the natural resources to sustain our livelihoods. Therefore, in fairness to ourselves and each other and to the generations to come, we need to look at ways of living and working that are not simply less degrading to our environment, but in fact regenerative. Surely our system of education can give us the skills to develop new technologies, but also the old wisdom that held human development and nature in balance for so long. Strengthening our local economies, living closer to where we work, or eating what we or our fellow citizens grow can all help to reverse the disastrous course the human species has taken for the last few generations, but we must do more. Here are several ideas our state can lead on:

Harvesting Our Energy

Massachusetts has been a national leader in energy efficiency efforts through the Green Communities and other programs, recognizing that the cleanest energy is energy unused. The state should follow through on current efforts to reform our Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) legislation, which could more realistically help residents and businesses hurdle over upfront costs to energy retrofits and renewable energy systems, and in the process, create many new jobs. If we invest in more renewable energy, in many forms, we may also continue to build more resilient communities and restore our natural environment. Some policies can be changed to encourage more private investment--not simply for large-scale projects like CapeWind, but for more human-scale and district- or community-scale projects which allow residents, groups of residents and small businesses equitable participation in renewable energy markets. For example, more favorable net-metering, feed-in tariff and interconnection rules can remove barriers to distributed energy generation. Homeowners and neighborhood groups could benefit from a more decentralized system that keeps energy in local and micro-grids, results in less loss of energy due to inefficient transmission or isolated damaging events, and keeps more dollars in the local economy.

Purchasing Policy

Regulations ought to be changed to remove barriers to the creation of local public utilities (electric and broadband), if so desired by communities, in order to keep service and prices at reasonable levels in an increasingly monopolistic market. On average, public utilities (which were generally established before changes to the law) have weathered major storm events better and kept prices lower than their private counterparts. One avenue that cities and towns in Massachusetts may pursue, though currently underutilized, is to adopt a local option for the municipality to become an energy aggregator, whereby the local government purchases power on behalf of its residents. The city of Lowell recently exercised this option and will realize between 8-10% savings on its utility bills, while purchasing 100% locally produced renewable energy. Much like the previously-discussed Buy Local policy, state government and state-funded institutions can use their purchasing power to support and guide the development of products and services which strengthen our local economies and environments.

Waste Not, Want Not

Massachusetts has set important goals for our state in energy use and greenhouse gas emissions reduction. It now needs to do the same for its solid waste and water use reduction. More than setting goals for reduction, Massachusetts ought to adopt a completely new approach--a zero-waste strategy--that eliminates toxins and material unable to be reused or recycle at the point of production, and diverts material that can be reused or recycled from the waste stream and landfills. Diverting organic waste for composting and more material for recycling will not only reduce our impact on the environment, but create a positive impact, enriching our soils, saving our local budgets money, and encouraging new local jobs. A locally-focused and environmentally-friendly purchasing policy could help to boost demand to favor products that have been made with a high content of recycled material or that can largely be recycled and used as feedstock for such products. Moreover, we can further encourage better product design and ensure the reuse or recycling of products through pending legislation that holds producers of electronic waste financially responsible for its disposal; or provides support to businesses to remove toxic chemicals in favor of healthier alternatives; or through an updated bottle bill, places a deposit on plastic, glass, and aluminum beverage containers, no matter what beverage they hold.

Clean Water

The beverage containers that litter our streets and parks are often water bottles, which points to a need not only to update our bottle bill, but also to reduce demand for such bottles. Cities and towns are now struggling to maintain their water and wastewater infrastructure, let alone invest in new infrastructure to meet unfunded federal mandates. More support in the form of state grants and financing to municipalities and rebates to individual residents must be given in order to keep up with these demands. Too much water is lost to aging pipes and inefficient plumbing fixtures to sustainably manager our water. Yet we must also review our regulations and realign incentives to encourage individual and district-scale financing and governance solutions that tap greywater for toilet or irrigation needs. Less expensive methods of dealing with stormwater than traditional engineering--through green infrastructure and low impact development strategies--ought to be fully integrated into state-funded projects, as well as supported on the local level. Working in concert with one another, these new policies can work to clean our water, curb our usage, treatment and associated energy costs, and create healthier, more beautiful communities.

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