MAPC seeks outside review of their Health Impact Assessment

MAPC, the agency that conducted the health impact assessment, has hired an outside agency to review the conclusions of their assessment. MAPC’s HIA was faulty and incomplete but came to the conclusion that the compressor station would not have a significant health impact on the community. Their conclusions enabled the approval of Enbridge’s air quality plan approval.

Now that the ink is dry on permits that their study helped allow, MAPC is thinking maybe there was a problem. We find the timing a bit frustrating.

Read more from The Patriot Ledger/State House News Service - Planning agency seeks review of Weymouth compressor study (link)

Excerpt: “Five months after it became clear that a study clearing the way for a proposed natural gas compressor station in Weymouth was based on incomplete data, the regional planning agency that produced it is seeking an outside review to determine if its conclusions were in error.

The Metropolitan Area Planning Council announced last week that it had hired London-based Public Health by Design to re-examine its health impact assessment, which found that there would be “no substantial changes in health” for Weymouth and the surrounding communities as a result of the gas plant’s operations. The assessment’s findings have been cited by the Baker administration in approvals of project permits.

In May, amid a contentious appeal process over an air-quality permit the state issued, the Department of Environmental Protection revealed that the data used in the MAPC’s work was less than two-thirds of what regulators had originally sought. The MAPC soon said that its original conclusions could not be assumed to remain valid.” (The Patriot Ledger/State House News Service)