BEAT's Blog

A few months ago enginneer James Scalise, representing Valley Mill Corporation, appeared before the Pittsfield Conservation Commission. He was there because Bonded Concrete wanted to build and operate a cement plant in Pittsfield, and since Valley Mill already had been issued a permit to operate a waste transfer station at the same site, couldn’t they just amend Valley Mill’s permit and avoid all those tedious delays and reviews. The commission said “fine with us.” How this was allowed to happen is an exercise in dysfunctional civics.

Again, Mr. Scalise was appearing before the commission to argue for amending the existing permit rather than applying for a new permit. Here’s a little bit of background from my previous posting.

First, the intent of the environmental regulation that allows amendments to a permit is to avoid having applicants revisit the entire permitting process for some trivial and inconsequential error made on the applications. I don’t think the writers of the regulations envisioned, “Did we say we were going to build a construction and demolition waste transfer station? Silly us, we meant someone else is going to build a cement plant.”

The second point is that by amending the permit instead of reapplying, the applicant is able to avoid close scrutiny and regulatory review of the newly conceived project. The Pittsfield Conservation Commission was aware of this, but allowed this bizarre process to occur.

Mr. Scalise began his presentation by informing the commissioners that there were only four issues they should consider at this hearing. I like the approach. Tell the regulators what issues would be considered open to discussion. Mr. Scalise has a history of using this approach in Pittsfield (it doesn’t work as well in some other towns) but other engineers appearing in front of the Pittsfield Conservation Commission have also begun to use this technique.

Mr. Scalise explained to his students (yes, that was the tone) that the first issue that should be considered in deciding whether this change in project should be considered merely an amendment is the purpose of the project. “The purpose of the project has not changed,” he stated. (Cement plant vs. waste transfer station? I wondered how he was going to finesse this one.) Mr. Scalise informed the commission that the original purpose was the development of an industrial site. That hadn’t changed. (Yes. The commission bought it.) “The Wetlands Protection Act doesn’t get very specific about use. It’s more specific about impact to a resource area.” His students, (who, by the way, are charged primarily with upholding the Wetlands Protection Act and should know better than to fall for this one) had no problem with Mr. Scalise’s logic. Nobody asked, “But doesn’t the proposed use have a lot to do with the resulting impact?” (Actually BEAT did bring up this point during the public comment session, but neither the commissioners nor the applicant’s representative responded.)

The second issue Mr. Scalise was going to allow the commission to consider was scope of work. He showed them a map and then informed them, “This really defines the areas that are in your jurisdiction.” He then went on to say that since the new project had fewer square feet of jurisdictional area than the previous plan, the scope of work was reduced. Interesting definition of scope of work, but again the commission bought it. He also pointed out that he had changed the plan so that there was no longer any work in the floodplain. “So that’s no longer required for us to talk about.” Nobody asked about it. I guess nobody wanted to get in trouble.

The third allowed topic according to Mr. Scalise was “Does the project meet the relevant performance standards.” His logic on this one seemed to be that since the old project did, there shouldn’t be any reason to think the new one wouldn’t. But the project had been entirely redesigned. Shouldn’t the commission have to look at this issue again for the redesigned project? Sorry. I’ll be quiet.

The fourth topic for which Mr. Scalise had apparently called this meeting was to discuss whether the potential for adverse impacts to the protected statutory interest (the wetlands) will be increased. “I think you have to look at this two ways.” (Everybody take notes please.) The first is the jurisdictional area of the project. Mr. Scalise had already shown that this area was reduced. Second was habitat. He informed the commissioners that the site had previously been considered by the state to be rare-species habitat. The state’s new maps no longer list this area as rare-species habitat. Therefore, the proposed project will have less adverse impact than it would have had at the time the original permit was applied for. (Kind of a narrow interpretation of the issue?) “So I think that makes your decision easier,” he told the commissioners, and added “So that’s really the overall issues for you to think about.” (Subtext; please don’t think about any others.)

The City’s Conservation Agent, Caleb Mitchell, then gave his fellow commissioners his recommendation (Yes. Mr. Mitchell is both the Conservation Agent and a voting Conservation Commissioner). He went down every topic Mr. Scalise had discussed and no others (Good boy!), agreed with Mr. Scalise’s assessment of each topic, and then added one other comment. The proposed cement plant could not begin operation until all suggested safety and environmental safeguards were in place and a professional engineer had signed off on the final site as built. Mr. Scalise agreed that this was reasonable and that it was already a condition of the plant’s other existing permits. So what was all that cement-truck activity at the site recently? To be continued.

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