Environment News, May 26, 2016

The environmental outreach team is focused on educating and gaining the support of local community groups.  So far, the committee has been successful in getting letters of support from Sudbury Valley Trustees, the Sudbury Water District, and the League of Women Voters.  The director of our group, Jim Gish, recently went to Hudson to join our neighbors from the Protect Hudson group for a brief meeting with Congresswoman Niki Tsongas, who represents Hudson and Precinct 1 of Sudbury.  While she was aware of our opposition to the project, she was under the false assumption that sufficient environmental safeguards were in place to protect our lands- not true!  We took the opportunity to dispel this misconception and drew her attention to the fact that the Energy Facilities Siting Board has a history of looking primarily at construction costs.  We told her we needed her help in advocating for viable design alternatives- alternatives that provide greater balance between construction costs and the immense cost to the community than the current plan has.  We emphasized that alternative designs could minimize the inevitable loss in property values, protect our water supply, provide real conservation of our conservation lands, and preserve the character of Sudbury and Hudson.  We hope that we made some inroads and opened her eyes to the defects in the process that allow encroachment by big energy at the expense of local communities.  Now, when we write to her—and we encourage you all to do that—she should have a bit more appreciation of how serious the problem is for those of us who live here.  It was a short meeting, but hopefully it will deliver a long-term impact.  We all just have to keep chipping away at the problem little by little.