Climate activists including a number from Lincoln participated in two recent protests against the proposal to significantly enlarge hangar space for private jets at Hanscom Field.
On April 20, protesters from Extinction Rebellion and other groups stood in front of planes to clock them from taxiways and also blocked the entrances of fixed base operators Signature Aviation, Jet Aviation, and Atlantic Aviation. Twenty of them were arrested, though apparently none from Lincoln. Two days later, activists held a standout at the State House and called on Gov. Maura Healey to denounce the expansion and align her office with the Green New Deal.
The protest at Hanscom, which involved about 40 people from eight towns — included Alex Chatfield and Dilla Tingley of Lincoln (see her “My Turn” piece here). The event drew news media (see reports from WCVB, NBC-Boston, and Boston 25 News) and a heavy police presence. He is one of the organizers behind Stop Private Jet Expansion at Hanscom or Anywhere, a coalition that has grown to include Extinction Rebellion and more than 80 other groups. Lincolnites also participated in an October 2023 State House rally on the same issue.
The protests arose after the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIR — go to this page to download) submitted by the project proponent became public in late March. That statement asserted that the project would not result in a net increase of flights because many of them will allegedly replace “ferry flights” by planes that aren’t based at Hanscom.
The project proponent (North Airfield Ventures and Runway Realty Ventures) want to build 17 new hangars — down from the initial 27, though the total square project is still 495,000 square feet, including about 82,000 square feet of storage space in a refurbished Navy hangar. The project also includes four 20,000-gallon jet fuel tanks and one 5,000-gallon tank for aviation gas.
Letters of protest were also sent to the Mass. Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EOEEA) by Save Our Heritage and the Hanscom Field Advisory Commission, among other organizations. The DEIR is “inconsistent, does not support its claims, contradicts state climate policy, and ignores relevant scientific research,” HFAC chair Chris Eliot of Lincoln wrote in the group’s letter, which asks MEPA to return the DEIR to the proponents and resubmit with more information.
The HFAC letter cites an independent analysis by Industrial Economics, Inc., that disputes the ferry flight calculations and other claims in the EIR. “The proposed project will greatly increase the number of operations at Hanscom Field and the GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions associated with the facility’s flight operations. Due to the very small number of aircraft likely to relocate to Hanscom from other airports, the beneficial effect of avoided ferry flights would be insignificant when compared with the substantial increases in operations and GHG emissions expected from new aircraft based at Hanscom Field,” that report says.
Activists have also noted that the developers are only required to disclose the emissions associated with the proposed hangars and equipment, but not the GHG emissions from the aircraft themselves.
The multiple protests and hundreds of letters probably won’t be able to stop the project, however. EOEEA Secretary Rebecca L. Tepper noted in the document requiring the DEIR that MEPA (the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act overseen by the EOEEA) “is not a permitting process and I do not have the authority to approve or deny a project. The purpose of MEPA is to provide meaningful opportunities for public review of the potential environmental impacts of projects for which agency action is required, and to assist each agency in using… all feasible means to avoid damage to the environment or, to the extent damage to the environment cannot be avoided, to minimize and mitigate damage to the environment to the maximum extent practicable.”
The DEIR and other documents can be found here. The public comment portal is here (project 16654, login/registration required). The deadline for comments on the DEIR has been extended to June 14, 2024.
Your article accurately states Secretary Tepper’s role in the expansion, and the limits of the MEPA process. You step outside reporting to write, ‘The multiple protests and hundreds of letters probably won’t be able to stop the project, however.’
“It’s hopeless!” is the tool of the opposition, for this project, and for every other progressive movement in history.
Let’s be clear, there are serious hurdles. However, there is reason to keep fighting.
First, the Governor may not halt the project directly, but she has several indirect levers on Massport, and they are powerful. She has power of appointment, of which Massport members are keenly aware. She can affect how much money Massport gets from the state. She can insist on more and more environmental investigation work, as she should, because of the complex environmental challenges of the project. These are only a few.
Second, everyone in the Commonwealth is paying for efforts at all levels–at home, in Towns, the State, the nation–to reduce our carbon footprint, and to get down to a zero carbon goal in the future. The CO2e emissions from the expansion of this airfield for private jet use is likely to negate all the greenhouse gas reductions achieved by all the solar panels installed in the Commonwealth to date. We are paying and working for a better world, but a wealthy few get to undo it all.
Giving weight to the idea that this project is inevitable is complicit with the goals of the developer. It is a strategy used in all of history to extinguish hope and drive for all things progressive: sorry, we can’t deliver civil rights to colored people, it’s just impossible. Women’s rights are really too difficult to make happen. It’s a losing battle to switch our society from carbon-based fuels to renewables.
Whose side are you on?
Huzzah!
Civil disobedience…more than appropriate for Thoreau country!