Remarks prepared for the Peabody meeting of the ISO New England Community Liaison Group on June 8, 2023.
I’m Jerry Halberstadt, a founding member of Breathe Clean North Shore and Coordinator of the Clean Power Coalition and of Healthy Air Peabody.
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.
We have a pollution problem affecting the health of every person in our North Shore communities. Pollution affects health today, making children ill and damaging their lungs and minds, thus impacting their future. It makes elderly people ill and can kill them. Finally, by amplifying global warming, pollution increases future threats to health. Community organization effort focused on health education is a springboard for action.
In our North Shore and Cape Ann communities, we face an invisible threat of air pollution that causes disease and premature death while it despoils our environment and contributes to global warming. Every breath brings the potential for disease and death.
Like sailors approaching a hidden danger, we need a lighthouse, a warning system for air pollution so that we can mitigate the harm to ourselves, our natural environment, and the climate and so that we can act together to reduce air pollution by stopping it at the source.
On a bright November Saturday, advocates for clean energy from across Massachusetts joined Peabody residents in the "Peabody Peaker Push" at the courthouse in Peabody Square to advocate against the proposed gas- and oil-fired electric generator (“Project 2015A”).
Among them was Peabody resident Hunter, a young man of 8 years, holding a sign that said, “Non Renewable Energy is Peak Stupidity.”
We need to have a process that can bring together citizens, producers of power, experts in community development, and community organizers.
For the process to be effective, several issues must be addressed at the start.
“Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.”
Our survival is at risk. The world is on fire, drowning in flood, thirsty in drought, hungry in famine, devastated by tornadoes. Climate change caused by human activities, mainly from burning of fossil fuel—gas and oil, is threatening all of nature along with our civilization. In Peabody, fossil fuel generators and cars harm our health. Is cheap energy worth the disaster?
What can we do in Peabody to address our share of this world problem? We must focus on eliminating all sources of greenhouse gases— that trap heat in the atmosphere and change the climate. Our use of fossil fuel is harming us now and threatens the future of our grandchildren.