The DeVillars gambit

The EPA's stand on runway expansion at Logan may touch even communities that can't hear the planes

by Ben Geman

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

This week, New England's top environmental official enters the fray over the proposed new Logan Airport runway. According to Environmental Protection Agency officials, New England EPA head John DeVillars -- who must submit his agency's comments on the plan by Friday -- is likely to criticize the runway on grounds of "environmental justice." When he does, he'll be adding new fuel to a fiery political struggle that's rekindled a popular movement against airport expansion. And if his comments are strongly worded and widely covered, he'll also help push an emerging issue into the state's political mainstream.

The growing environmental-justice movement fuses civil rights and ecology. It's the idea that poor and minority neighborhoods shouldn't be disproportionately burdened with environmental hazards such as dumps and incinerators just because they have little political clout. Or, in this case, that places like Chelsea and Roxbury shouldn't have to put up with the sounds of more screaming jets.

Though EPA officials offer few details on what DeVillars will say, his comments could help lift this movement out of activist circles and into the public eye.

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For months, Massport's push for a sixth runway at Logan Airport has sparked contentious hearings, costly lobbying, and vicious opposition from a slew of community groups.

Massport, the agency that runs Logan, calls the runway badly needed: according to Massport's figures, passengers face about 120,000 hours of delays each year. A new east-west runway, the agency says, will help Logan accommodate its increasingly busy stream of air traffic.

But stiff opposition to the runway has developed in neighborhoods and towns surrounding Logan. Activists from Somerville, Boston, Chelsea, and other communities under the flight paths have united into a stronger front than Massport expected -- especially since one of the agency's arguments is that a new runway would distribute noise more evenly around the Boston area. According to Massport, Winthrop and parts of East and South Boston would get less noise, while Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, Chelsea, and Somerville would get more.

Cellucci, who strongly supports the runway, points out that Boston's economy relies on Logan; some runway proponents wonder aloud whether Boston's planned $700 million convention center might suffer from airport delays. Still, many local elected officials are siding with the anti-runway activists -- among them Menino, state representative Byron Rushing, and city councilors from several cities. Two vociferous opponents have been congressmen Joe Moakley and Mike Capuano; indeed, for Capuano, runway 14/32 has so far been the defining issue of his embryonic congressional career. In general, runway opponents say the controversy highlights the need for a more regional transit approach focusing on smaller airports like the ones in Worcester and in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Capuano and Moakley want DeVillars to oppose the runway specifically on environmental-justice grounds when he delivers his comments. They point to a 1994 executive order by President Bill Clinton requiring federal agencies to consider environmental justice in planning, and they argue that increasing airplane noise around low-income and minority neighborhoods violates the spirit of the order.

"Environmentalism has to do with more than soot and smog," says Capuano. "It also has to do with peace and quiet and the ability to enjoy your own home."

With time running out on Massport's plan, DeVillars appears ready to agree that environmental justice is an issue here.

The EPA has only an "advisory" role in the airport debate, not veto power. Nonetheless, a negative review by the agency's top regional official could carry a lot of weight. The next step for runway proponents -- assuming they get past regulatory review -- is in the courtroom, where they will fight to lift a 25-year-old injunction barring runway expansion at Logan. And in court, statements from the region's top environmental official could boost the anti-runway case. Lee Breckenridge, an environmental-law professor at Northeastern University, says a DeVillars statement on environmental justice "would put into the record of decision-making by the FAA a powerful statement. . . . It would set in motion a demand that the FAA look further into the impact of the project and look more closely at alternatives."

Adds anti-runway activist Anastasia Lyman: "If DeVillars has major problems with [the runway plan] that echo the problems laypeople have with it, it can do nothing but add to the message that it's a faulty plan."

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Actually, it might do more than that. On April 26 in Springfield, far away from the simmering runway war, the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) will convene what on the surface sounds like a bureaucratic bore: a public hearing on revamping codes dictating where companies can build waste-handling plants.

Included in the draft of the new codes is a section requiring the state and local boards of health to consider the cumulative impact on a neighborhood of various types of pollution. Activists aren't thrilled with the draft, which calls for consideration of "documented" impacts from cumulative pollution -- that, they say, is notoriously hard to show. Still, they say, it's a first step toward codifying the idea of environmental justice in state and local policy.

The push for new regulations comes just as the state DEP is engaged in a broader study of the "cumulative impact" idea. And elsewhere, environmental groups are trying to incorporate the concept into policy debate. The Environmental League of Massachusetts, for example, is backing a state bill to create "Areas of Critical Environmental Justice Concern" in urban neighborhoods. Groups like Alternatives for Communities and Environment -- which is pushing the new state waste-plant regulations -- point to Roxbury, where several waste-handling sites are clustered around Dudley Square; they argue that new environmental-justice regulations are needed to keep low-income neighborhoods from getting stuck with the types of facilities that wealthier areas are adept at beating back. And the Massachusetts Environmental Collaborative, an umbrella organization, decided this year to make environmental justice a top priority.

The idea of environmental justice has already surfaced repeatedly in the airport debate, too. But DeVillars can give the issue another high-profile airing -- and, coming when it does, his statement could affect a lot more than just a runway.

"If you want to advance any issue, you need cooperation at all levels of government," says Namrita Kapur, legislative director for the Environmental League. "We have the grassroots, and with [Clinton's] executive order we have two down. Now we need to link them, and DeVillars's involvement could be crucial."

Ben Geman can be reached at bgeman[a]phx.com.