By Emma McGrath, News Correspondent
Governor Deval Patrick, joined by Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, revealed in a much-anticipated news conference earlier this month a $50 million action plan to buttress the state against the threats of climate change.
Citing extreme weather, rising sea levels and an increase in vector-borne diseases in wildlife, the governor proposed a multi-pronged approach to combat a changing environment — a step he said could be postponed no longer.
“The question is not whether we need to act,” Patrick told reporters at the event, which was held at the New England Aquarium on Boston’s waterfront. “The overwhelming judgment of science … has put that question to rest.”
The proposed initiatives, which will be implemented by a complex web of agencies across the Commonwealth, aim to fill legislative holes in the areas of energy, public health and transportation, all of which Patrick said are vulnerable in the face of of climate change.
The state’s energy grid, which has been particularly susceptible to violent storms in the past, is an area of special concern for the Patrick administration. In recent years, severe weather systems have left Massachusetts residents unable to power their homes for days on end.
Mary-Leah Assad, spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EEA), said that major weather events like Superstorm Sandy can also wreak havoc on vital electricity-powered facilities like hospitals, police and fire departments, government buildings and wastewater treatment plants.
“A major focus of the Governor’s climate change plan is to make the grid less vulnerable to these incidents,” Assad said.
But potential climate change woes don’t end with power outages. The Patrick administration is also concerned about local health infrastructure and communities’ abilities to protect themselves from illness and disease.
Paul Shoemaker, associate director of the Environmental Health Office at the Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC), said that although a gradually-warming planet is often painted as a macro-level issue, it has very real-world, dangerous effects for everyday people.
“Climate change poses a lot of public health concerns,” Shoemaker said, “and those concerns are tied into our local environment, as well as our larger environment.”
More frequent and longer heat waves during the summer, he said, have created serious problems for people with respiratory difficulties. Air quality falls dramatically during times of extreme heat, particularly in urban areas with heavy pollution from automobiles and power plants.
Suzanne Condon, director of the Bureau of Environmental Health at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH), said the department recently completed a survey of local health capacity that will be released to the public later this winter. The most imminent health threats due to climate change include bacterial growth in recreational waters, housing and food impacts and inadequate emergency planning, she said.
In the summer of 2012, the Commonwealth grappled with a surge in cases of Eastern equine encephalitis, a virus transmitted into humans by mosquitoes, which are drawn to warm, moist climates. Aerial spraying eventually eliminated the problem, but in 2013, the state was slammed with yet another wildlife crisis when oyster beds had to be closed due to a spike in the bacterium vibrio parahaemolyticus. Scientists say the microbe has thrived in New England’s warming coastal waters.
Those waters — the same ones that give the Bay State its renowned seafood, boating and maritime trade — also put its physical infrastructure in grave danger.
Bill Hickey, spokesman for the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), said that rising sea levels threaten the state’s extensive system of parkways and roadways, most of which were built under very different environmental circumstances.
“These transportation resources were designed based on historic weather, sea level and flooding patterns,” he said. “Many of our roads do not meet the current standards for construction and storm drainage.”
Many parkways and roadways in the Commonwealth, Hickey said, were built along rivers and streams, or were constructed to meander along the banks of lakes and ponds. That proximity to water, he said, makes them highly prone to flooding, which can bring transportation to a grinding halt, and undermine the physical, mental and spiritual health that these resources provide local communities.
Shoemaker said that BPHC will continue to work with city and state agencies to minimize environmental harm, but he warned that as long as climate change continues, so will its ramifications.
“These are very large, very complicated climate systems,” he said, “and changes in those systems are going to hit people hard.”
