While the state and our entire country continue to reel from the
devastating impacts of the current extraordinary fiscal crisis, it
is “business as usual” at the independent state authority that
operates Logan Airport. Massport, accountable to no one, has once
again dealt a blow to East Boston residents by a surprise
pre-Thanksgiving award of a $30 million contract to design and
manage construction of the proposed $455 million, 9,000-space Logan
consolidated rental car and relocated commercial parking garage,
which would be located, literally, within a stone’s throw of homes
in the Gove Street neighborhood.
The press flurry following announcement of the contract – which
focused on why former Big Dig manager Parsons Brinkerhoff was
rewarded for its past mistakes – totally misses the real issues: why
in the first place is Massport now committing to the design of a
project to relocate a massive new five-story garage and rental car
parking complex before it has completed the environmental review
process, and before it has answered important questions raised by
the Massachusetts Department of Public Health about the lack of
adequate air quality data and the potential impacts of emissions
from the garage on nearby residents?
Massport argues that the new impacts of the garage are small because
it merely relocates existing parking spaces. This dodges two
fundamental issues: first, what are the health impacts of existing
Logan operations, and what is Massport doing to evaluate and reverse
these impacts; and second, since the relocated garage will not
generate any significant new revenues, why isn't the Patrick
Administration demanding that Massport defer the garage, use these
resources to pay off debt on the Ted Williams Tunnel, and cancel the
Ill-advised plans to double North Shore tolls to $7?
Massport's first priority should be current problems it has not
addressed, rather than creating new ones by using its financial
capacity to worsen adverse health impacts with a garage relocation
project. First and foremost on its list should be to study the
health effects of Logan operations on nearby residents, principally
the effects of aircraft taxiing close to residences in East Boston
and Winthrop and of cars on roadways coming to and from the Airport
and using the Logan garages.
These issues have gone largely unanswered since as
far back as at least 2001, when former Environmental Affairs
Secretary Bob Durand required Massport to complete, by 2006, a
special air toxics monitoring study in the neighborhoods. But the
Massport study did not even begin until September of 2007, it will
not be completed until 2011, and it avoids critical issues being
raised by MDPH, and the general public, about emissions of ultrafine
particulate matter and the effects of “cold starts” of automobiles
from a massive garage to be so close to residences.
Last July WBZ-TV’s Joe Shortsleeve reported that preliminary results
from the MDPH's own Logan Airport Health Study -- the funding for
which began in 1999 -- revealed a significant increase in lung
cancer cases in neighborhoods of East Boston close to Logan. This is
an alarming finding that has serious public policy and public health
consequences, which need to be addressed.
But whether, and when, that study will be
finalized is now in doubt since Governor Patrick recently cut from
the current state budget almost $100,000 needed to complete that
study by this summer. Coupled with the Administration's decision not
to require Massport to fully evaluate the impacts of ultrafine
particulates related to the proposed new consolidated rental
car/commercial garage, there are serious questions about Governor
Patrick's priorities and commitments to address the health impacts
of Logan Airport.
The time has come to put the health of residents, and the
pocketbooks of Logan's neighbors, before yet another unnecessary
project. Can we really afford to wait with the hope that one day
Massport will do what is needed? Or do we need some firm leadership
by Governor Patrick to force Massport to address these concerns and
to restore funding for the Administration's own public health study?
As Martin Luther King said, "injustice anywhere is a threat to
injustice everywhere."
*Mary Ellen Welch is a life-long resident of East Boston and a
director of Airport Impact Relief, Inc.
