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Tails
Administrator
2682 Posts |
 Posted - 05/01/2008 : 11:22:21 AM
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| One thing we might be able to do is write letters to the Zoning Board of Appeals so we all know, for sure, they had all the information before voting on it. Then, if they do, they do, and we will all have to either live with the fallout or move. So basically, we would be getting pushed out of the city that (I for one) grew up in and have family and friends here from a rich non-compliant man that sits pretty in NH while he inflicts suffering on others and does absolutely 0 about it. You would think with all the money he spends in court and campaign contributions, he would give Newburyport and Everett some relief. |
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outoftowner
Member
24 Posts |
Posted - 05/01/2008 : 12:45:33 PM
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| Please, Tails, don't expect any mercy or compassion from the man. He may appear at some point to be cooperative, but it will only last until he has what he wants. After observing what is happening in Newburyport, it's obvious he has no conscience. He understands and responds only to power and dollars, although he will sometimes spend irrational amounts of money just to win. If you give him any benefit of the doubt, he will laugh up his sleeve and take full advantage of it. Do not ever rely on his word (even if written) or expect normal human compassion. |
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massdee
Moderator
5299 Posts |
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massdee
Moderator
5299 Posts |
Posted - 05/01/2008 : 7:47:29 PM
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Someone who lives in Newburyport told me,
"the Board of Health has been the most effective part of local government in dealing with Thibeault. Every time they shut him down, he sues them. But it turns out that state law gives health boards very broad powers and he's never been able to defeat the board in court. So see if you can find a sympathetic member of the board of health and make sure the board institutes strict, enforceable requirements on him if they can't stop him completely. This guy also needs to be watched 24/7, and you have to require him to pay for that oversight. Otherwise, no one will know whether he's adhering to the rules. And if no one is watching him, he won't."
"Lastly, the only enforcement mechanism that works is shutting him down, and the health dept. seems to be the only local body who can do that. Any other punishment (fines, for example) just leads to endless delays and days in court as he sends in his lawyers for appeal after appeal."
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Edited by - massdee on 05/01/2008 7:49:38 PM |
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n/a
deleted
11 Posts |
Posted - 05/02/2008 : 3:18:52 PM
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| Is this not america land of the free or is this a communist country russia where we have no say. All this stuff put together is enogh to go to people in charge and say we dont want it. Why one person mayor makes all decisions. Even Bush gets vitoed. |
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massdee
Moderator
5299 Posts |
Posted - 05/02/2008 : 6:10:22 PM
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o The Daily News of Newburyport
Published: April 24, 2008 08:37 am ShareThis PrintThis
Newburyport: Landfill settlement near; city in dark about contents
By Stephen Tait
Staff Write
NEWBURYPORT — The Department of Environmental Protection, the attorney general and New Ventures are close to reaching a settlement over citations and a preliminary injunction issued against the Crow Lane Landfill owner in 2006.
But city officials remain in the dark about what that agreement may be and will remain on the outside looking in until the settlement is signed and officially approved by a judge.
Amy Breton, spokeswoman for the Attorney General's Office, said the agreement is still pending and could offer no other comment.
In the meantime, leaders such as Mayor John Moak and Jack Morris, the city's health director, must sit back and wonder what the agreement may be.
"We don't have any idea of what they are doing, and that always worries you when you don't have an idea," the mayor said. "It may be an excellent agreement for us. But we certainly hope it doesn't diminish our ability to monitor and regulate New Ventures. That would be a major concern of ours."
"I suspect anything is possible," Morris said of the agreement. "I don't know what effect it will have on anything we have done."
For the past half decade or so, the Crow Lane Landfill has proved a contentious issue in Newburyport, largely because of the nauseous smells of rotten egg and burnt matches that often disrupt the lives of neighbors. Residents who live nearby complain of headaches, running noses, sore throats and many ruined days of potential outdoor recreation.
The city and state have fought to remedy the smells through tighter regulation of the landfill but continually run into problems with New Ventures and its owner, William Thibeault, who refuses to speak to The Daily News about the problems at the site.
Morris and Moak said the most recent agreement was decided upon without the city's direct participation. The settlement is the result of a preliminary injunction from October 2006. A trial was ongoing regarding the issue but has been put on hold because of the settlement, said Morris, who was scheduled to next go through cross-examination.
Moak said the agreement will likely become public next week.
He said the courts must approve the agreement before it becomes official. The mayor said because of that, the agreement would carry more weight than the dozens of fines, injunctions and other punishment levied by the state and city in the past.
"It will have the judicial branch backing this order," Moak said.
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massdee
Moderator
5299 Posts |
Posted - 05/04/2008 : 09:13:35 AM
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Mystic malady
Agencies, volunteers work hard to clean watershed, but pollution persists
Email|Print|Single Page| Text size – + By Kay Lazar
Globe Staff / May 4, 2008
Matt Shuman has trudged through some miserable weather, inched down icy rocks, and wrapped numb fingers around carefully collected samples of frigid river water as a volunteer foot soldier in a regionwide brigade of citizen scientists.
more stories like this
For the past seven years, the 31-year-old Somerville resident has dutifully driven once a month at about dawn to the High Street Bridge on the Arlington-Medford line, climbed down the bank, thrust a pole into the Mystic River, and scooped four water samples that are analyzed later for a variety of contaminants. Then he has headed to his civil engineering job in Melrose, bleary-eyed but happy that he is "part of a process that is using this data for the public good."
By all accounts, environmental authorities will need Shuman's help - and that of his counterparts at the nonprofit Mystic River Watershed Association - for quite a while. The group's testing shows that water quality in the Mystic River Watershed is in tough shape, no better than it was a year ago when the federal Environmental Protection Agency gave it a "D," then announced an ambitious plan to clean things up. Since then, because of bacterial contamination the water has met swimming standards just 46 per cent of the time and boating standards 79 percent, the EPA stated.
"It's not an easy, overnight fix," said Todd Borci, the federal agency's water enforcement chief. "This is long-term work."
Borci said the agency is relying on a collaborative approach, working with state and local officials and nonprofit groups to pinpoint the countless - and often hidden - sources of contamination in the vast watershed. Home to about 500,000 residents, the Mystic is one of the state's most densely populated and urban watersheds, encompassing 76 square miles within 21 communities north and west of Boston.
With widespread sewage overflows, significant amounts of oily storm-water runoff in urban areas, and even dog excrement dropped into street drains, the problems are many and the fixes not cheap. The EPA's mission occurs at a time when many of the watershed's cash-strapped communities have few funds to repair aging water and sewer pipes, which are believed to cause a large portion of the contamination.
"Parts of our system goes back to the pre-Civil War era," said Andy DeSantis, assistant director of Chelsea's Department of Public Works. "To replace all of our sewer system is probably a quarter-billion dollars in today's dollars."
Suspecting violations of federal clean water laws, the EPA in 2005 and 2006 required several communities in the watershed, including Chelsea, Everett, Malden, Medford, and Revere, to test for contaminants in every "outfall," where storm water is discharged to the Mystic River or one of its many tributaries. Most of the communities, including Chelsea, are still testing or searching for the sources of the pollutants that were found.Continued...
Joining the communities in water testing is the Arlington-based Mystic River Watershed Association, which has trained volunteers, including Shuman, to collect samples on a monthly basis at 10 sites throughout the watershed. The samples are tested for free by the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, and the data are forwarded to each of the communities in the watershed and the EPA. The association also organizes several cleanups each year along the waterfront and sponsors many programs to focus public attention on pollutants.
Next on the group's agenda is the dog problem.
"Each time a person registers a dog in one of our 21 communities, they will get an educational brochure about not dumping dog poop in storm drains," said Mary Beth Dechant, the watershed association's director of water-quality monitoring.
"In Somerville, someone told me they were walking in Davis Square and they saw someone trying to stuff a dog poop bag down a storm drain," Dechant said. "We have heard reports from a boat club in Winchester that they were seeing dog poop bags floating in the water there."
But the issue goes way beyond cleaning up after dogs.
"We have people changing their oil at home and dumping their used oil in storm drains," Dechant said. "People see that water is going underground and assume it's going to a water-treatment facility, and often that's not the case. Most of the storm drains in this watershed drain directly to a water body with no treatment."
Rules governing the amount and type of pollutants that can be legally discharged into Massachusetts rivers, known as municipal separate storm sewer system or MS4 permits, are about to be significantly tightened, according to David Webster, the EPA's chief of the industrial permits branch. The permits, issued every five years, are up for renewal this year. Webster said the EPA is slated later this month to issue draft plans that will require municipalities to more aggressively track down illegal sewer connections and to lower the percentages of bacteria in their discharges.
"For towns that have been doing the minimum under the current permits, it will be arduous," Webster said. "It's very surprising how much sewage is in the storm drains."
The EPA hasn't set a date for when it expects the Mystic River Watershed to rate a more respectable grade, signifying that the water is safe for swimming and boating most of the time.
But officials point to a similar project to clean up the Charles River, which also received a grade of "D" back in 1995; today, it gets a B-plus.
"We have increased the amount of staff to work on this and we're also looking for ways to leverage private foundation funds, too," said Lynne Hamjian, the EPA's surface water branch chief.
But cash is tight at the federal level, too, she said.
"We aren't gong to be able to throw all the money on the table and solve all the problems," Hamjian said. "We're in this for the long haul."
For more information, visit mysticriver.org, and epa.gov/region1/mysticriver.
Kay Lazar can be reached at klazar@globe.com.
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
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massdee
Moderator
5299 Posts |
Posted - 05/04/2008 : 09:29:26 AM
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Here is an interesting link to the EPA and there are some nice pictures of the Mystic River. A couple of them look like the area that Wood Waste wants to relocate to.
You must be logged in to see this link. |
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Tails
Administrator
2682 Posts |
Posted - 05/05/2008 : 3:10:46 PM
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Some ways we can stop this is to rally, have an online petition and have it sent to our lawmakers, (once the motion starts, I would even protest in front of city hall) call in the news media and lets take notes from Southbridge where our current budget director is conveniently responsible for their 29 year contract. I would gladly start a website against the Wood Waste move.
If our city council is tired of seeing egg on their face then they ain't seen nothing yet if they allow this to go forward.
You must be logged in to see this link. |
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outoftowner
Member
24 Posts |
Posted - 05/06/2008 : 11:39:19 AM
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Here is a link to a recently posted history of the landfill in Newburyport. It will give you an idea of how this company works:
You must be logged in to see this link.
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kimmy
Member
32 Posts |
Posted - 05/06/2008 : 12:19:10 PM
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| Everything I have been reading is amazing. Cant anything be done about the lies that were told. |
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Tails
Administrator
2682 Posts |
Posted - 05/06/2008 : 1:55:40 PM
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| It's about the all mighty dollar and the greed for it. That's all. We have never faced these issues before but we now have the most materialistic Mayor that sells out or health and the environment for a buck. (in his pocket) and completely lied to people about what activities would take place and where. I'm totally done with him, I thought "maybe" he could have been redeemed, he could have come on TV and told people this is false, etc...etc...but it's not false and thats why he's not saying anything. Mayor Deveney ( who I am so sick of hearing from....when did we vote her in????) will do the best she can for damage control but it's way past that. |
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JoeSister
Member
33 Posts |
Posted - 05/06/2008 : 3:04:44 PM
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Tails I think you have an obsession with the Mayor's chief of staff.
Why don't you run for Mayor and see how easy it is to run the city. You have answers for everything and you are never wrong, ask yourself. I'll vote for you, I'd like to see you get elected so I can come back here and see how badly you get crucified.
I think Carlo got stuck holding the bag from 40 years of other mayors doing whatever they wanted but unlike Hanlon I haven't once heard him blame the guy before him.
Maybe he needs our help and not your criticism.
If your not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
Carlo still has my vote and my families vote.
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Tails
Administrator
2682 Posts |
Posted - 05/06/2008 : 3:37:50 PM
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| I’m happy for you SisterJoe. I think the Mayors Chief of Staff/City Solicitor is an intelligent woman. Do I agree with her multitasks and her salary....heck NO....but it’s too bad she only has a two year tenure. I don’t have all the answers.....I’m wrong a lot and I get corrected on it and have no problem with it. I don’t see how “I” can be part of the problem rather than a solution....I don’t get it. I supported Carlo for the election but I never will again unless he “dumps” Thibeault. Lets see how long he can procrastinate this move but the problem is, it will happen. As far as Carlo getting “stuck holding the bag” he had it the easiest that any Mayor in Everett’s history ever had and he is still blowing it. |
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Marie
Senior Member
114 Posts |
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Wood Waste
