Transition is coming early to the City of Easthampton. Mayor Nicole LaChapelle, who had announced last year she would not seek another term, will resign early to take on a new state role. Come July 21, LaChapelle will join Governor Maura Healey’s administration as Commissioner of the Department of Conservation & Recreation.
The federal government has confirmed its cancellation of a $20 million environmental grant to the city of Springfield, but officials are not giving in. There is a formal, administrative appeal process. When city officials learned of the grant’s cancellation, it said it was considering all options. Since then, the city has been in touch with the office of Attorney General Andrea Campbell. That could add some firepower to Springfield’s response.
This past Wednesday, the Massachusetts Appeals Court overturned a lower court ruling and, in effect, reanimated—although did not fully resurrect—the prospect of a biomass plant in Springfield. The decision gives the biomass plant proposed for Page Boulevard enough life to punch open the project’s coffin.
SPRINGFIELD—The City Council sped through a thin agenda Monday that included a final realization of the new tree ordinance. Earlier this year, the Council approved a revamped arboreal code including fines and fees for removing public trees. However, the creation of the fund to use
About 15 years after biomass entered the public consciousness of Springfield, the matter is still milling paper. Most recently, this took the form of a fresh defeat for the proposed project once slated for East Springfield. What now seems like beating an expired horse, is actually a reminder of how far opponents have gone.
SPRINGFIELD—City Councilors, state legislators, community activists and a United States Senator took a victory lap at City Hall after the state cut off the air for the ever-lingering biomass project. On Friday, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection pulled the air quality permit Palmer Renewable
The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection may have driven a stake through the heart of the nigh-undead biomass power plant proposed for Springfield. In a five-page decision dated April 2, the department said it pulled the air quality permit amid growing public pressure and heightened
UPDATED 2/22/21 10:09AM: To include a statement from DEP and to include comments from Sen. Warren’s office. SPRINGFIELD—United States Senator Ed Markey joined opponents of the ever-undead proposal to build a biomass power plant here to voice his support for stopping the project once and
SPRINGFIELD—Aside from its atypical procedure to a select a new Council President, the City Council here glided through its last meeting of 2020. This Hell-spawned year had driven the body from its friendly-enough confines to cyberspace for nearly all of 2020. Monday was no different.
Our One Hundredth is an occasional series on Massachusetts’s US Senate Elections. WILLIAMSBURG—The candidates for the Democratic US Senate nomination have been barnstorming the state since the race erupted last September. At this stage, neither have ceded territory favorable to the other, but patterns of