LETTER: Marblehead Resident Responds To Transfer Station Vote

The following is a letter submitted to Patch from Marblehead Arnold Terrace resident David Lieberman:

MARBLEHEAD, MA — I'm writing in response to the decision by the Board of Health taken at their meeting April 5 to move forward with plans to open the Green Street road to the transfer station for general use.

I'd like to commend the board members for showing flexibility in response to community concerns about the Plan B, which as designed would have all residential and commercial
traffic entering the transfer station via Green Street. Public Health Director Andrew Petty argued that the original Plan A design would require residential and commercial traffic to cross on the grounds of the transfer station and that Plan B eliminates this problem.

It does not; it simply exports the problem off the transfer station grounds and onto Green Street, where it mixes in Green Street through traffic for good measure. As designed, I believe this proposal pretty much guarantees chronic clogging on Green Street's southbound side up to West Shore Drive, and on the northbound side up past Tioga Way at least as far as Waterside Drive.

I'm glad the Board of Health voted to defer a final commitment to go forward with Plan B until they have independent verification from a formal study that it doesn't pose health and safety risks to the neighboring communities. Committing to a traffic study is a good start.

What I didn't hear from the Board, however, was any commitment to evaluate specifically the environmental impact of the Plan B route as originally proposed, apart from the likely changes to traffic flow.

I want to hear an independent assessment of the risk posed by continual exposure to diesel fumes for families immediately abutting the access way, and on Green Street itself during heavy traffic periods, as well as the risk that increased volumes of heavy traffic up and down GreenStreet poses to those of us relying on remediation systems to keep our homes safe from ground contamination.

If the traffic study comes back and says the original Plan B design is unsafe and the board accepts that finding, then the environmental concerns are moot, but barring that outcome, I think we all need to know what those risks really are before any commitment to build Option B is approved.

The project architect's suggested alteration to Plan B to make Woodfin Terrace the ingress point for all traffic and Green Street the exit only for residential traffic is very encouraging. My biggest concern all along has been the increase in truck traffic near our community Plan B would trigger, and this change seems like a good way to avoid that.

As the architect was careful to point out during the April 5 board meeting, though, his was only a seat-of-the-pants suggestion, and there could be any number of reasons why it could be found infeasible once real design work goes into it; I'd hate to see a potentially viable compromise turn out to be nothing but a stalking horse for getting Plan B through the door as-is.

For the second time at a meeting of the Board of Health, I heard someone attack those of us who live in proximity to the transfer station for "choosing to live on the dump" and having the gall to question whether our right to live safely in our homes ought to be trumped by what the town decides is expedient.

That exact attitude is at the root of a lot of the long, unhappy history of environmental disasters in this country, and I'm happy to say I didn't detect a lot of sympathy for it from the Board of Health.

The town decided to zone my neighborhood for residential use decades ago, and that decision carries with it the ongoing obligation for the town not to be any more cavalier with respect to the health and safety of the people who live here than it would be toward any other community.

That obligation doesn't just evaporate when it suddenly poses an inconvenience.