Top Healey Environmental Leader Calls for Reform at Massport

Special to the Transcript

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:

• Identify additional pollution cutting measures for neighborhoods near the Airport

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

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

• 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.