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Chelsea to Massport: Store your contaminated sludge somewhere else
By adamg on Thu, 03/26/2015 - 11:09am
The Chelsea Record reports the Chelsea Conservation Commission rejected plans by Massport to store contaminated sludge from dredging near the Black Falcon Pier in South Boston in "Confined Aquatic Disposal Cells" in Chelsea Creek.
The commission said just because Massport did the same thing with sludge from the Conley Terminal doesn't mean Chelsea Creek can continue as the repository for the stuff.
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Comments
good
Time for Hingham to do its share. Or Winthrop.
De Leo
They already have a large chunk of toxic waste over there with statewide impact ... and then there is Deer Island.
keep it in southie
Winthrop already has the sludge in the deer island sewage tanks. How about keeping the contaminated sludge in southie.
Would anyone in
Chelsea notice?
East Boston residents should
East Boston residents should be concerned too, since Eastie borders Chelsea creek, Massport has a long history of destroying the quality of life of it's neighbors, and they don't give a fuck either!
Winthrop?
Last time I checked, though legally in Boston, Winthrop abuts the place where every single piece of filth which excretes from your rectum and urethra ends up. That and with the airport, I think Winthrop has done a fairly good job in terms of taking on their share of the local environmental problem.
As far as the term environmental justice goes (read the article), no one is being forced to live in Chelsea, East Boston, or Roxbury. The industrial uses in those areas are the result of late 19th century land planning and development. Forgive me if you buy a house on Kemble Street in Roxbury or a condo near Eastern Avenue and soon discover that it isn't Drumlin Farm. These noxious uses were there a long time before you.
No one is being forced
Right. They can just camp out in the North End or instead.
Or live on someone's lawn in Weston.
free market principles in housing and toxic waste dumps
Sure but a lot of people do. And there is a ton of public and private investment in those places.
Instead of rejecting those places as free market toxic waste dumps, we could protect the people and property by cleaning it up. If the polluters and their assets are long gone, there's superfund. Everyone deserves a safe place to live, a place that doesn't make them sick or die.
Weston is a nice community. In addition to having the highest average income in the state, there are a lot of good people there. If we discovered a toxic waste dump in Weston we'd make the effort to clean it up, too.
welll
As a resident of Chelsea and a co-home owner, who does live near Eastern Ave. (Okay a few blocks away but its walkable from my house downtown).
I can tell you.. we're trying to clean up the town. Just because the land use originally was for industrial, doesn't mean it still needs be that way. Same thing could be said for many areas around Greater Boston that were once industrial areas.. (think assembly square, gateway center, and the like)
I attend city meetings, we're trying to make Chelsea a better place to live for its residents. And not allowing this crap (pun intended) to be dumped near us is the first step. We're getting there.. its just apart of a long range plan for the city.
Even the areas on that abut Everett (you know, scrap metal city) will slowly be cleaned up and turned into better use of the land. (just read an article that large chunks will be turned into apartments and condos).
Finally, just because everyone thinks Chelsea is a shithole.... a term, I use myself on occasion.. doesn't mean it has to be. We have just as much right to clean water ways, safer living, and cleaner towns just as much as Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, or anywhere else in Greater Boston. But we can't do it unless we start saying NO to being a dumping ground, and here's the first step.
Chelsea is Great
Please don't get me wrong. People harp on Chelsea all the time. It is a lot safer than many areas of Boston, has very few empty storefronts, and a corruption culture that used to make 1960's Somerville blush, has been forced away.
I agree that many noxious uses are wrong, but when I hear the term environmental justice it makes me shake a little bit.
Some areas of the city are needed for noxious uses. The urban environment needs a "broom closet" for lack of a better phrase, and for the most part, Chelsea Creek is an industrial area and has been for a long time. Owing to its nautical position and the infrastructure in place however, I don't think it is environmentally responsible to go polluting a different area of the harbor when one area which has oil tanks on both sides of it can be used for this use and not World's End.
You don't go out and buy a second rug for your puppy to pee on if he is sticking to peeing on another.
Environmental Justice
Nationally, as in MA, it means that we are trying to stop dumping on poor people because they are poor.
Your cocksure ignorance about this very basic concept, and lack of grasp of what the term means doesn't change the fact that expecting a certain segment of the population to bear the burdens of the entire population is wrong - especially if they are already living with a disproportionate amount of those burdens.
I suggest you check the EPA website for more information on what it means. Poor people live in polluted areas - and that should not be a pretense for expecting those people to bear more of burden of your filth so you can have artificially high property values.
http://www.epa.gov/environmentaljustice/
Good Friday Is Next Week
Can you save nailing yourself to the cross until then?
Go take a long walk off a short pier
Preferably, near the CSO discharges.
But first, rig your toilet to flush all waste into your basement "broom closet".
Seriously - educate yourself about the terms that you are using or STFU. Better yet, you and markkkkkk should go have a burrito fest and then discuss your urban planning "ideas" in a car on a long road trip. That would be environmental justice!
Wow! Tough Day.
In the name of environmental justice and the war on the poor, can you name the hardscrabble Massachusetts town which has two prisons and two superfund sites? Can you?
It's Concord. You know, the town with a median family income of over $160,000.
Those poor people. How do they live there?
Next!
What more is proposed for Concord?
See? Nothing more. Because .... MONEY!
Also, a superfund site isn't the only measure of environmental degradation.
I bet you let your dog shit on your neighbor's walkway and don't clean it up - because there was dog shit there before, see?
You really, really, really need to calm down
That is all.
a great rationalization
The term 'environmental justice' makes John 'shake a little bit.' I'd have to agree if I thought the poor or any underclass should accept more toxic waste created by enterprise than the rich or any influential class.
Sure and free market principles shouldn't hold polluters accountable. And people who oppose the dumping of toxic waste in their neighborhoods should move, amiright?
By which John is arguing that it is environmentally responsible to pollute Chelsea Creek because our choice, as he sees it, is to pollute it or another place in the harbor. Are those the two choices? It sure looks like Chelsea is taking one of the off the list. What are best practices in dealing with this waste?
Wow
You're really worked up about this.
To take a different approach from Mr. Costello, what Cybah and the citizens of Chelsea are doing is noble, the question underlying "environmental justice" is this: are crappy environmental uses there because poor people are there or are places like that part of Chelsea (or Everett by the natural gas port) places for poor people because the uses in the area deflate property values?
The sludge has to go somewhere. If you find a better spot, forward the info to Massport, but it's going somewhere, at least temporarily.
What next
You going to tell us how God made Chelsea so that rich people wouldn't have to deal with their own waste? Right era of urban planning philosophy.
John Costello I like how you
John Costello I like how you label Eastie, Roxbury, Chelsea as industrial waste dumping grounds, I think you have been living under a rock all these years, It has been what, years now that industrial factories in Chelsea ,Eastie and Roxbury have all turned into either Art gallerys, Lofts, or office buildings , factories for manufacturing is a very rare sight in New England these days.Go to Lowell , Lawrence or even Lynn and Fall River , all these old mills are now condo's. As far as Winthrop, test the water at the beach,let's see how much human waste particles you wil find in the water coming from the mwra treatment facility in Deer Island, I would not dip my toes in that water..
I beg to differ on your
John Costello: I beg to differ on your ascertation that things like the sludge were here before residents. I personally have a family lineage that goes for more than 4 generations of working class family members. There were factories and what not here but there were also factories and assembly plants all over the state. Over time people saw Chelsea as a place where things could be dumped , so they started doing it. Now we have more than our full share and we are rejecting new problems, time to "share the wealth."
You seem to be implying that the only people complaining about this stuff are new residents who bought condos. This is not true, they just happen to be more visible online. Many of the long time residents here are not online due to not being tech savy or in many cases because they work so many hours that they do not have time to be online talking about these issues. Here in Chelsea residents are united to make things better new, old, spanish speaking, english speaking, condo owners, renters, home owners etc.
Kudos to the commission for making such a bold move. I support them 100 percent (As a City Councillor in Chelsea I am one of the people that approve any appointments to the commission and renewals.)