What's New
Last session,
Environment Massachusetts helped stop a proposal to industrialize the
Boston Harbor Islands State Park and National Recreation Area. AES
Corporation, a Virginia-based energy conglomerate, sought control of
Outer Brewster Island, the gateway to the harbor, for the construction
of a liquefied natural gas terminal. Handing over Outer Brewster Island
would devastate the park,
interfere with the public’s recreational enjoyment, destroy valuable
fishing grounds and negate the public’s investment.
Environment
Massachusetts will continue working to protect the Boston Harbor
Islands and other public treasures for future generations to use and
enjoy.
Brief Summary
Taxpayers
in the Commonwealth have spent $4.5 billion cleaning up Boston Harbor
so residents and tourists can enjoy the beauty of the harbor’s beaches
and waterways. To crown this achievement, Congress established the
Boston Harbor Islands State Park and National Recreation Area in 1996.
Our years of investment have started to pay off, with cleaner waters,
more wildlife and 307,000 visitors in 2005 alone. But now, AES
Corporation, a Virginia-based energy conglomerate, is seeking control
of Outer Brewster Island to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG)
terminal and storage facility.
Outer
Brewster Island, the gateway to the park, is surrounded by some of the
most popular waters in the park, with great fishing, sailing, birding,
diving and boating. AES’s plan would bring tankers twelve stories high
and three football fields long to Outer Brewster, displacing wildlife,
disrupting ecosystems and industrializing our public park. The facility
would also require a security zone restricting public access to the
surrounding harbor islands and waterways.
A
decade after the park’s creation, with billions of dollars invested in
the Harbor clean-up effort, why would we allow AES to devastate the
park, ruin the Harbor view, interfere with the public recreational
enjoyment and destroy valuable fishing grounds? We must make sure our
elected officials stand up and save our harbor islands. We must not
destroy what we have worked so hard to protect and preserve.
Environment Massachusetts will continue to protect the Boston Harbor
Islands and other public treasures from sale or development.
