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| Lincoln-Sudbury High School students air hopes and frustrations with their school's pending solar project before State Sen. Jamie Eldridge. |
Jamie Eldridge, State Senator for the district, hosted this meeting of his Green Advisory Council at the Parker Damon Elementary School. Among the towns represented were Acton, Ayer, Harvard, Lincoln, Maynard, Shirley, South-borough, Stow, Sudbury and Westborough.
Attendees came from energy advisory councils, recycling committees, agencies concerned with protecting rivers and groundwater, an energy audit company, community preservation committees and other organizations driven by environmental concerns.
Here's a rundown on the environmental bills Sen. Eldridge filed last week:
- An act to require producer responsibility for collection, reuse and recycling of discarded electronic waste -- Goals for this bill, which has been filed several times in the past 10 years, are to boost public access to e-waste recycling for items such as computers, televisions and printers, and remove the financial burden for collecting and recycling these materials from municipalities, placing it instead on manufacturers.
- An act to create a grant program for municipal and regional energy managers -- This bill aims to allow Green Communities grants to help fund salaries for energy managers who could be hired to develop, coordinate and monitor comprehensive energy-use reduction plans and work with town agencies and officials on administering them. According to Sen. Eldridge, when the town of Acton was becoming a Green Community, it created such a position, and the savings generated by the energy manager's work more than offset her salary.
- An act relative to streamflow standards -- This bill would update the Water Management Act, and is aimed at using science-based streamflow standards to ensure adequate water flow for the people, habitats and wildlife that depend on waterways. Sen. Eldridge noted that there is also a separate Water Infrastructure Bond Bill that would provide $2 million to help communities across the Commonwealth learn how to manage their water infrastructures.
- An act to encourage municipal recycling and composting -- This bill would formally require all cities and towns to establish recycling programs for solid waste, and require residents to separate recyclables and compostable waste.
- An act relative to plastic bag reduction -- If passed, this bill would strike dramatically at the environmental impacts caused by single-use plastic carryout bags by banning their use from Massachusetts stores and requiring that stores only supply reusable bags or recyclable paper bags.
- An act relative to energy efficiency funds generated by municipal lighting plants -- Currently, independent municipal light plants (such as those operating in Littleton and Hudson) are not required to apply funds collected from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative toward energy efficiency programs. This bill would require that they do so.
- An act to promote zero net-energy buildings in the Commonwealth -- This bill would give the Board of Building Regulations and Standards authority to establish definitions of residential and commercial zero net-energy buildings, with an eye to having all towns adopt these standards for residential buildings by Jan. 2020 and commercial buildings by Jan. 2030.
- An act to protect the natural resources of the Commonwealth (known as the "no net loss bill" redraft) -- In essence, this bill says that if open space is sold for development or private use, the same amount of land must be purchased to replace it. This system is already more or less in effect; the bill would formalize it to help protect against a current trend of cash-strapped municipalities selling off formerly protected land to raise revenue.
- An act further promoting energy efficiency and green jobs (the Home Oil Heat bill) -- Establishing a fund similar to those natural gas and many electric customers pay into, this bill would assess 2.5 cents per gallon on home heating oil to be used by oil heat retailers to develop improved energy-efficiency programs, and would coordinate with existing Mass Save programs to allow customers to get energy assessments, weatherization services and efficiency rebates.
While these bills have been submitted, Sen. Eldridge observed, they face some formidable challenges. "There continues to be a focus at the State House on pure job-creation versus sustainable job-creation." The Senator's legislative aid Kelsey Smithwood added that environmental bills that call for certain kinds of changes are often portrayed by the opposition as a tax, "and it's very hard to overcome that in this climate," she says.
Said Eldridge, "We need to focus on how we improve the political will to get these bills through."
Smithwood called for "people who are passionate about these topics to come testify at public hearings to help move them and keep bills alive."
One session participant suggested raising consciousness via more online petitions. Another wondered if the Eldridge's office could put out public hearing alerts to interested constituents. Smithwood said she'd use the contact information from the sign-in sheet for that day's event to get in touch with members of this group, who could in turn spread the word to their own contact lists.
That sort of practical exchange -- a key purpose of the meeting -- went on throughout the session. During discussion of the e-waste bill, an audience member pointed out that there are very few players currently equipped to reclaim the materials from this type of equipment, and suggested creating incentives for developing such a business in Massachusetts.
A woman who works preserving the Sudbury and Assabet River watershed areas spoke about the need for homeowners to recognize that water and sewer rates are lower than they ought to be and called for them to support increases to bring the rates in line with the demands on the system. She also suggested the possibility of requiring area pharmacies to participate in more pharmaceutical take-back programs to help reduce river pollution from these substances.
A Maynard volunteer who also works for Tufts University noted that the school's low-impact development class, where students work on real-world projects, could provide a free resource for towns looking for help with designing their water districts. And in another exchange, volunteers for several towns' Green Communities committees shared current and past experiences with the process of adopting the Stretch Building Code.
"I'm really pleased with the efforts of the Green Advisory Council," said Sen. Eldridge. "The members continue to bring me their ideas on how to better protect the environment and reduce global warming, some of which I have turned into legislation to file. With that kind of grassroots activism on the ground, I'm confident that Massachusetts will continue to lead the nation in alternative energy and conservation policies."
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