Issues We Care About

The Trustees are working on the following legislative issues in 2010:

Energy and Climate Change
Energy and climate change are shaping up as the defining issues of the 21st Century. The Trustees are examining our operations from top to bottom across the Commonwealth to reduce our carbon footprint.  We are adapting our land protection criteria and our stewardship practices to help natural systems adapt to climate change, and to balance traditional land protection with the need for land on which to site renewable energy sources.

Wind
The Trustees have been monitoring companion bills, generally referred to as “Wind Energy Facility Siting Reform,” since their introduction in the early days of the 2009–2010 legislative session. We are generally supportive of this effort to make permitting of these alternative energy facilities predictable and expeditious, while protecting the natural, cultural, historic, and scenic resources of the Commonwealth. The present bill, H 4955, on July 29, 2010, received a favorable report from a conference committee, but legislative adoption was not completed before the session adjourned. If the legislature reconvenes in informal session during the summer to address other unresolved legislation, there is a chance that the Wind Energy bill would be voted, unless a Legislator objects.

During the bill's journey through the Legislature, The Trustees have urged the Administration and legislative leaders to strengthen its protections of cultural, historic, archaeological, and scenic resources by including advocates for those resources in the advisory and decision-making bodies and procedures created by H 4955. The present bill represents a significant improvement in this regard, and The Trustees support its passage, with reservations. We believe that the Massachusetts Historical Commission or a private, nonprofit preservation organization should be represented on the Wind Energy Siting Board, which is the permitting authority for large turbines and wind farms. We see no good reason for potentially marginalizing historic, scenic, and cultural resources when impacts of wind energy facilities are weighed.

Cape Wind: The permitting process for the Cape Wind project began nearly 10 years ago and is virtually completed, so it will not be affected by H 4955. However, it has served as a case study of the multiple factors that The Trustees believe should be considered when deciding whether to approve such a project. As a result of strong, consistent, and scientifically based advocacy by our colleagues at Massachusetts Audubon, the project's potential impacts on natural systems were thoroughly analyzed. The Massachusetts Historical Commission, charged by statute with safeguarding the historical and archaeological heritage of the Commonwealth, advocated vigorously for analysis of the project's impacts on those resources. As a result, The Trustees are confident that the project and its impacts have been subjected to thorough and careful scrutiny, that the permits which have been issued are well-founded, and that the project should move forward.