Scientists say Boston is one of the most vulnerable cities in the world to the effects of climate change. And before he left office, now-deceased Mayor Tom Menino had put the city on a path to adapt as quickly as possible to those effects. He left behind a bold climate action plan, and a committed team that wanted to carry that plan out, lead by environmental chief Brian Swett.
“Chief Swett did some really wonderful things. I was actually sorry to see him go,” says Veronica Eady, vice president and director of the Conservation Law Foundation Massachusetts. “We need to continue to the momentum that he was able to create.”
Swett announced he was leaving about a year after Mayor Marty Walsh took office. Many more employees in the department have left or were fired – including Commissioner Nancy Girard and all the members of the city’s community outreach and education team, called Greenovate. This “Greenovate team” was supposed to help the city adjust to life with climate change – by building sustainably, leaving room for encroaching sea levels, and reducing emissions.
Despite that, new environmental chief Austin Blackmon, without commenting on staffing, says Boston is on track toward its green goals. But environmentalists like Eady say three and a half years after Superstorm Sandy nearly missed the city, Boston has lost momentum toward a sustainable and climate change-ready future.
“Things have kind of slowed down,” she says. “They need to assemble the rest of their team.”
“We’ve got over 25 people in the environment department,” says Blackmon – who’s now roughly 15 months into his job as chief of environment, energy, and open space. “Compared to most American cities, that’s quite a bit of staff.”
But Eady and other advocates are concerned about the city’s community engagement around climate change challenges, especially when it comes to the future of the waterfront. Developers have proposed major buildings on city wharves that Eady says are at risk from rising sea levels caused by climate change. Those projects are now moving through the approval process with the city and Boston Redevelopment Authority, or BRA. Meanwhile Eady says the collaborative process of building a new sustainable municipal harbor development plan stalled.
“A lot of meetings were canceled over a number of months and I know that a lot of people involved in the planning were really concerned about that, that the municipal harbor plan wasn’t moving forward, yet the BRA was entertaining new development projects, really massive tall development projects, and that’s a real concern,” she says.
Blackmon’s also worried about rising sea levels.
“You know I think it’s always a concern particularly given some of the projections,” he says, “but I think the city’s doing a good job of evaluating these projects as they come in.”
Blackmon says city and BRA staff are constantly assessing the harbor front’s sustainability.
“It’s an ongoing review and as is our policies along the waterfront. It’s an ongoing conversation,” he says. “All our projects, no matter where they’re located, are reviewed by the BRA. There’s actually a committee that’s formed between members of my office as well as members of the BRA that reviews these projects to make sure their developers can demonstrates they can at least be LEED certifiable for energy efficiency, and then also evaluating them on this climate preparedness checklist.”
Blackmon says the city’s progress toward its environmental goals needs to be evaluated in context. He says in his first year he prioritized those goals so Boston gets the most effective tasks done first – like reducing carbon emissions from city buildings and increasing those buildings’ use of solar energy.
“So now we’re in the execution phase so that as we come up to the next update of the climate action plan we can really demonstrate progress moving forward,” Blackmon says.
That next update of the climate plan is due in 2017, under the terms Mayor Menino spelled out in an executive order designed to ensure Boston kept moving toward a future where it can cope with climate change.
