Prepared for presentation at Brooksby Village on March 6, 2023

Guest post by Steve Andrada

[Steve Andrada presented his film, "Stop the Peabody Peaker Plant," to an enthusiastic audience of over 100 at the Torigian Senior Center on February 16, 2023. The film documents the 2-year long efforts of residents of Peabody and beyond to stop the construction of an old technology facility that would create additional pollution. Here is Steve's introduction.]

Guest article by Win Flint
We all want to see the truly enormous changes required of our nation and world to mitigate and slow climate change. Only government has the power to mandate and implement the needed systemic changes. Getting government to change requires legislation and for that to happen, politicians need to change. They only do this after extreme pressure from voters.

So British Petroleum (BP) and the fossil energy empires are doing everything they can to prevent people from uniting for change. Hence the “carbon footprint”.

Guest Article by Linda Leonard with Robert Gamer

Everyone wants their family (children, adults, and elderly) to enjoy good health. We all want to breathe healthy air, avoid illness, and live a long, happy life.

But pollution poisons our air, makes us sick, and kills some of us.

Introduction to the Healthy Air Peabody program, a community organization effort focused on health education and mitigation of harm is a springboard for remedial action.

I appreciate the decades of service to the people of Peabody by Charles Bonfanti as he retires from his position as Commissioner of the Peabody Municipal Light Plant (PMLP), as reported on January 2, 2023, by Caroline Enos (Light commissioner steps down over activists' push to stop peaker plant).

Like Mr. Bonfanti, we are all struggling to understand and adapt to what seems like a sudden emergency as we become aware of high rates of illness and death from pollution and the looming threat of climate change. Yet although these existential threats have been known for decades, we have all conspired to ignore them.

Within the context of emissions monitoring, I want to return to the point of cumulative impact. This facility is being built on the same site as two existing peaking power plants—two plants that have been polluting surrounding neighborhoods for decades with serious impacts. Preliminary studies have shown that census tracts around the Waters River site have significantly higher levels of pulmonary disease, cardiac issues, cancer, and other illnesses than other parts of the city and the state. This new facility cannot be considered in a vacuum: it will be piling on top of existing emissions and generations of environmental racism and harm.

The burden that neighboring communities are already facing is clear.  Do not further exacerbate these impacts.  The Peabody Peaker project should not be permitted to move forward especially if no community health impact assessment is conducted.  Instead of adding to the burden of the community, we should be reducing it. The city of Peabody and the PMLP should look to retire not one, but both of the existing facilities that are currently polluting and harming affected neighborhoods.

At this fall’s Massachusetts Health Officer’s Conference, I had the opportunity to hear Commissioner Suuburg discuss the initiatives of MassDEP to promote environmental justice and specifically, to address the cumulative impact of environmental stressors on environmental justice populations.

There are many well-documented health concerns associated with fossil fuel-burning power plants.

Carbon dioxide—the fizzy bubbles in carbonated drinks—is safe. Or is it?

The hearing today is focused on the obligation of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection to evaluate how to monitor the amount of CO2 pollution that the Peabody peaker may emit.

My remarks will focus on the validity of the assumptions underlying the monitoring method and on the moral validity of the underlying assumptions.