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
UPDATED 6/13/19 1:55PM: To include comments on the plastic bag ban from Mayor Reichelt. Following its larger, liked-named neighbor across the river, West Springfield has banned single-use plastic bags at retailers. The measure passed through the Town Council last week. As with Springfield’s measure, it
SPRINGFIELD—After weeks and months of fits and starts, the City Council passed its ban on the free distribution of plastic bags. However, passage came at the expense of the fee on non-plastic bags provided at retail, intended to discourage consumer use of single-use bags regardless
NORTHAMPTON—United States Senator Ed Markey brought the Green New Deal to the 413 to build popular support for the proposals underlying goals. Markey introduced the ambitious climate manifesto alongside New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez earlier this year. Since then, it has started a conversation, but
SPRINGFIELD—In a sign that environmental policy has become an issue for the City Council, the first major bill to emerge from the new Sustainability Committee has inched toward passage. The bill, shorthanded simplistically as a plastic bag ban, is not entirely new. However, it may