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.

At Devereux Beach, the dark sky and light rain gradually gave way to clearing and brightness. Reverend Kendra Ford led climate activists in the process of openly admitting their feelings of grief and seeing that mourning for loss because of the destruction unleashed by global warming is painful because of love for their families and the natural world.

Air pollution is a toxic cloud over Peabody and the North Shore

Prepared for presentation to the Peabody Board of Health on October 20, 2022

I am Jerry Halberstadt, Coordinator of Clean Power Coalition, the lead for the new initiative I present today. The goal is to focus on the disease and death caused by pollution in Peabody and the North Shore, protect people, and reduce the use of oil and gas, the major source of pollution.

Guest article by Judith Black

Black delivered these remarks at a die-in rally at the Danversport Bridge on September 27, 2022.

At a time when cities throughout the nation are closing their peaker plants and replacing them with battery storage sourced from clean energy, a new peaker plant is being built in Peabody, MA. [Peaker plants provide electric power during times of exceptional "peak" need for electricity.]