Concerned residents occupy MassDEP's office in Lakeville
/Concerned residents occupy MassDEP regional office to seek answers on environmental violations at compressor construction site.
Concerned residents of the South Shore and their allies occupied the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection Southeast Regional Office today, to call attention to the Department’s failure to “ensure clean air, land and water,” as its mission states.
A group of residents peacefully entered the building’s main conference room to request a meeting with DEP officials, who for weeks have failed to respond to emails and phone calls from residents reporting inconsistencies, discrepancies, and violations of the contamination clean-up plan for the ill-conceived Weymouth Compressor station.
Folks occupied the space for nearly three hours, negotiating with DEP staff until they agreed to address our communications. The Deputy Director of the Southeast office, Gerard Martin, has been ignoring all of our emails and phone calls, including from Margaret Bellafiore who has legal standing as the coordinator for the Public Involvement Plan (PIP) group.
The action was live-streamed, but due to technical errors, the live-stream is broken up in a few clips. You can find them all on our Facebook page below:
Video 1 (30 sec)
Video 2 (1 hour, 19 min)
Video 3 (16 min)
Video 4 (15 min)
Video 5 (2 min, 30 sec)
Video 5 (15 min)
Why are we concerned?
Soil toxins in the Fore River Basin have been measured at levels that are harmful to public health. Cancer, respiratory and neurological diseases in the area are above state averages. Asbestos, arsenic, 11 million gallons of spilled diesel fuel, and a host of other cancer-causing materials, are known to occur throughout the coal ash and “burner brick” material that forms the toxic foundation of the construction site; and are being dug up and brought to the surface where they are becoming airborne and spreading on local streets and local restaurants and other places of business. Despite this serious threat to public health, the MassDEP approved a Release Abatement Measure (RAM) plan for the compressor station, which, in addition to containing unacceptable shortcomings, has not even been adhered to by Enbridge and its contractors.
“Among a long list of unacceptable flaws in Enbridge’s ‘clean-up’ plan, the DEP is allowing Enbridge to get away with exposing cancer-causing burner bricks, estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands, buried feet below where DEP’s superficial sampling ended. The bricks are now being dug up and pulverized by digging equipment today, and trucks and workers are coming and going to the site liberating this toxic material into our community. Our calls and emails reporting this alarming ongoing threat have gone unanswered by DEP for weeks, so by necessity we are here today to demand answers and redress,” said Alice Arena, President of FRRACS. “That redress must begin with an immediate shut down of construction activities until DEP responds to this public health emergency.”
News Coverage:
WGBH / State House News Service - Environmental Activists Plan To Occupy State DEP Office In Lakeville
Weymouth News - Weymouth compressor opponents occupy Mass DEP office
Photos:
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