Our View: Environmental Protection

If Donald Trump wins the November election, it’s likely that his administration will roll back or eliminate altogether regulations that help keep our air, water and food safe and clean. Luckily, we live in Massachusetts, where environmental regulations, at least, will continue to protect the health of citizens. In recent weeks there were two high-profile examples of how the state is acting to safeguard residents and the air, land and water within our borders.

 At the end of September, Gov. Maura Healey’s administration blocked efforts by the Army National Guard to build a machine gun range at Joint Base Cape Cod. Opponents, especially the Association to Preserve Cape Cod (APCC), had argued that the range would endanger the Upper Cape’s groundwater. We don’t have to reiterate here how fragile groundwater resources are throughout the peninsula, and we agree that preserving the aquifer trumps the need for weapons training, which could be done elsewhere. This is not likely the end of the story for the proposal, but it is a significant victory for the environment.

 Earlier this summer, the state department of environmental protection denied a permit sought by Holtec Decommissioning International to discharge more than a million gallons of industrial wastewater from the shuttered Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in Plymouth into Cape Cod Bay. Holtec claimed that the treated wastewater would have no adverse impact on bay waters, but the state agency, after many public hearings, determined that because Cape Cod Bay is a protected ocean sanctuary, dumping of industrial waste is prohibited under the Ocean Sanctuaries Act. Holtec has appealed the decision. Last week, several organizations, including APCC, filed briefs in support of the state ruling (see our story in this edition). 

 In both cases, Massachusetts’ strong environmental policies are blocking efforts that have the potential, at least, to harm our drinking or surface waters. We have no doubt that a Trump administration would override these decisions if it could. While we can be secure in the knowledge that it won’t happen here, other equally deleterious projects in other parts of the country would no doubt get a green light under Trump, eroding the natural heritage that we all share as Americans. Keep this in mind on Nov. 5.