Greenfield ZBA approves Biomass Burner

On Monday morning, at an 8 AM meeting, the Greenfield Zoning Board of Appeals granted Matt Wolfe of Madera Energy the special permit he's been seeking from the town to build a $2.5 million, 47- megawatt wood-burning biomass electrical plant on a property next to the town's industrial park. The board imposed a number of conditions upon the project.

Some charge that the meeting was not posted 48 hours in advance, and that a violation of state open meeting law occurred.

Wolfe will still need several state and federal permits. Read local reporting on the meeting here:

Anita Fritz in the Greenfield Recorder
Anita Fritz in the Daily Hampshire Gazette (longer story, subscription required)
David Vallette on MassLive
Nate Walsh for ABC40
WWLP clips on Greenfield biomass
Montaguema.net forum

Noho DPW Guys

Special message to the MassLive forum trollers who paint the Northampton DPW workers as a bunch of layabouts: Would you care to trade places with these guys? Summer Street, Northampton, June 2009.

The Climate Bill Hits Home

Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich issued a press release last week explaining why he voted against H.R. 2454, The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, referred to as the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill. One of Kucinich's reasons is relevant to Western Massachusetts, where four biomass-fueled, electricity-generating plants are proposed—in Russell, Greenfield, Springfield, and Pittsfield.

The developer of the Greenfield facility, Matt Wolfe, 34, does not deny that biomass plants emit more CO2 into the atmosphere, per unit of energy produced, than coal. Under the Waxman-Markey bill, however, biomass burners are not bound by greenhouse gas cap-and-trade conventions.

Kucinich, on his opposition to the bill:

"11. Dirty energy options qualify as “renewable”: The bill allows polluting industries to qualify as “renewable energy.” Trash incinerators not only emit greenhouse gases, but also emit highly toxic substances. These plants disproportionately expose communities of color and low-income to the toxics. Biomass burners that allow the use of trees as a fuel source are also defined as “renewable.” Under the bill, neither source of greenhouse gas emissions is counted as contributing to global warming."

Read the whole story as reported in the Cleveland Leader.

The HuffingtonPost has some good reporting on the vote in Congress.

Roy Cowdrey Calls the Cops

Don't miss a single episode! Greenfield ZBA, The Reality Show, in which the Board chair, Roy Cowdrey (middle), calls upon a couple of burly cops to escort a woman from the microphone at a public hearing.

The ZBA was conducting its final public hearing on a proposed 47-megawatt biomass plant planned for a site adjacent to the industrial park. 250 or so citizens were in attendance, many, clearly, of the monkey-wrench persuasion. The board will reconvene on Monday morning at 8 A.M. and will likely take their vote on the special permit app for the project at that time.

Greenfield: If you really want to prevent "out-of-town" reporters and bloggers from violating your borders, stop being so damned entertaining. Hear it:

Cops, Zoning Board, Heckling Crowd: Greenfield!

Northampton is so polite. Greenfield is wild. ZBA hearing on a controversial proposal, ZBA chair pulls rank on public comment, cops escort a woman from the mic, the crowd goes wild. More later.

Photos from Adams Kickoff

Jesse Adams Kicks Off Campaign

Jesse Adams' campaign kickoff speech, June 24, 2009, at the Northampton Country Club.

Adams is running for the at-large seat on the Northampton City Council currently held by councilor Michael Bardsley, who will abdicate the seat in his run for mayor. Born and raised in the Pioneer Valley, Adams completed a bachelor's degree in English at UMass Amherst and graduated from law school at Western New England College. Having passed the bar in 2007, Jesse Adams is a practicing member of the Northampton legal community. He currently serves on the Forbes Library Board of Trustees.

There are two at-large seats up for grabs this year, and three candidates: Adams, veteran councilor James Dostal, and Kathy Silva.

City Finance Chief Chris Pile in the News

The city of Northampton was apparently wise to minimize its investment in the Massachusetts state pension fund, the Pension Reserves Investment Trust, or PRIT, this past year, a fund which suffered a loss of 29.5% in 2008.

The State House News Service reported the following:

"The best-performing fund in 2008 was the $60 million Northampton Retirement Board fund, which covers the benefits of 683 active public employees and 338 retirees. Its 19.3 percent loss in 2008 was the smallest in the state.

“We’ve done consistently well and that’s without doing some of the more risky investment types,” said Christopher Pile, city finance director and chair of the board. “We didn’t get into hedge fund or any of that kind of stuff.”

Pile said the board has about $2 million invested with PRIT, but wants to remain independent from the state fund. “We don’t feel any pressure to put any more in there obviously since the state pension fund did far worse than we did,” he said. “I think we’ll just stick with what we’re doing.”

Investments in cash and bonds helped insulate Northampton from losses that other funds took in riskier categories, such as emerging markets and international equities, but the local fund is moving back towards stocks again. Pile credited the advice of the DeBurlo Group, a fund consultant that also advised Malden retirement officials."

Springfield's Spiraling Poverty

Two great essays appeared this week on the subject of Springfield, Massachusetts, and the descent of its inner neighborhoods into poverty.

Poor Springfield, written by the Springfield Intruder's Bill Dusty, cites compelling Brookings Institution statistics on the state of the city's South End, and reports on controversy surrounding a plan by WinnDevelopment to develop more low-income housing in a neighborhood that is already tanking fast. Dusty writes:

"In Springfield’s South End - a prime breeding ground for the kind of despair that grips much if the city - the neighborhood suffers under the burden of a 50% poverty rate. Things are about to get worse, too, as the former Longhill Gardens site will be bringing in over one hundred more low income families just up the road..."

Maureen Turner, in this week's Valley Advocate, reports on a new book entitled "Metal Fatigue: American Bosch and the Demise of Metalworking in the Connecticut River Valley" (Baywood Publishing, 2009) written by UMass-Lowell professor Robert Forrant.

Turner writes:

"Companies like Bosch played a crucial role in Springfield's development. For 150 years, Forrant writes, the city sat at the center of a prosperous manufacturing corridor that ran along the Connecticut River, stretching from Bridgeport up into Vermont. Springfield's good fortune began back in the late 18th century, when Congress selected it as the site for a federal armory; the armory, in turn, helped spur other manufacturing development in the city, with a particular focus on metalworking and machine parts. Springfield became known as an area for innovation—Forrant calls it the Silicon Valley of its day—where new techniques and technologies spread from plant to plant, and drew new businesses to the area."

Dusty, in his essay, makes the following observation:

"The two primary industries in the city today appear to be infrastructure improvements via state and federal aid and the construction of affordable housing. Few private businesses come here. And when large companies like Baystate Health or MassMutual do invest in the city, the skilled jobs they create are mostly taken up by people who reside elsewhere. Or by people who want to reside elsewhere. One would be hard-pressed, indeed, to find a family hoping to someday move into the city of Springfield. And that is a shame."

Poor Springfield, indeed.

Here's a link to the Boston Globe's review of Robert Forrant's "Metal Fatigue."

NPR on Noho/Regional Amtrak

Nancy Cohen of Hartford's WNPR reports that states are competing for the $8 billion in federal stimulus money that is designated for rail improvements--and that New England rail advocates are calling for multi-state collaboration instead. (Northeast environmental coverage is part of NPR's Local News Initiative.)

Here's a link to Cohen's writing and audio report, which references Northampton, Massachusetts. Will Amtrak service be restored to the Connecticut River Valley route? Here's WWLP Channel 22 News' coverage:


Local journalist Mark Roessler has followed the issue; here is a link to his Amtrak-related stories in the Valley Advocate.

Here's a compendium of MassLive's reporting on the Amtrak issue, and here's what the Daily Hampshire Gazette has had to say about the proposal to return passenger rail service to Northampton.

Food Inc. at the Amherst Cinema

New York Times print journalist and blogger Nicholas Kristof, in a recent column about our nation's food supply, commends a new documentary called Food, Inc.

Opening at the Amherst Cinema on June 26th, Robert Kenner's "Food Inc." features NYT writer Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilmena), Joel Salatin of the innovative Polyface Farm, and Gary Hirschberg, founder of Stonyfield Farm Yogurt.

The Valley Advocate's Mary Nelen writes eloquently on issues of local food and agriculture here in Western Massachusetts. Here is a link to her archived "Locavore" articles.

Find local farm products on the CISA website. CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture) is the organization that produces those happy yellow "Be a Local Hero" bumper stickers you see everywhere in the valley.

Bill Peters, who writes for the online Local Buzz, has published a series of articles on the politics of locavorism. Peters asks: Do Locavores Make Life More Difficult for Farmers and Schools?

Hilton Garden Inn gets Financing

From the Daily Hampshire Gazette:

NORTHAMPTON - After months of discussions with bankers from the United States and abroad, the development group planning to build a 101-room Hilton Garden Inn hotel downtown has secured financing right in its own backyard.

Shardool Parmar, the president of Pioneer Valley Hotel Group, said his company received a financial commitment letter this week from Berkshire Bank of Pittsfield.

Here are links to local reporting on the issue:

Chad Cain on Gazettenet

Fred Contrada on MassLive
update 6/22 from Contrada

For full video of Planning Director Wayne Feiden's presentation of the revised hotel scheme to the city council on June 18, visit Daryl LaFleur's Northampton Redoubt on the Valley Advocate website.

The hotel plans were the center of some serious controversy two summers ago,
when it was revealed that the the city had issued the hotel developer a special permit for the project before site plan review, a violation of the city's own rules.

Young@Heart@Manchester UK

Florence Waters, who blogs for the telegraph.co.uk, has posted an interview with Northampton, Massachusetts great-grandmother Pat Booth, who is traveling to Manchester, England, to perform with the Young@Heart Chorus. In the interview, Pat talks about singing the Buzzcocks song "What Do I Get" in her car on the way to rehearsal for their "End of the Road" tour.

Ms. Waters' Bio:

Florence Waters works for Telegraph.co.uk and studies cultural memory in her free time. Before she joined the Telegraph she was a journalist in Berlin for a newspaper about virtual worlds. Florence did her BA in history of art and photography at The Courtauld Institute in London.

Northampton, Massachusetts' Y@H perform at The Manchester International Festival, held from the 10th to the 18th of July.

Here are the Buzzcocks performing their famous tune: