Barbara Howard: Gov. Charlie Baker, introducing a bill today that he says will help fight the effects of climate change. The roughly $1.5 billion bill comes as Massachusetts has been walloped by three nor'easters in a row. The storms brought severe flooding to some coastal parts of the state. Here to talk about Baker's bill is WGBH Radio's Adam Reilly. Hi, Adam.
Reilly: Hey, Barbara.
Howard: So Gov. Baker, he was in Scituate today. He was announcing that bill, and Scituate, of course, is one of the communities that was hit hard by the flooding and the recent storms. And here's what the governor had to say:
We all need to pull together to do the work that's associated with ensuring that we here in the Commonwealth are ready for what will be the very significant changes associated with climate, water temperatures, sea levels and all the rest that have we seen so much of over the course of the past few weeks.
Howard: OK Adam, so what exactly is in this bill that the governor's filing?
Reilly: There is a whole bunch of stuff in here. As you said it's around $1.5 billion — $1.4 billion to be precise. Of that I would say about $300 million is earmarked specifically for measures that are supposed to beef up critical infrastructure and help deal with the effects of climate change. There's a bunch of other investment in areas that are not directly related to climate change, for example $580 million of investment in deferred maintenance and recreational resource stewardship — things like parklands, trails, that sort of thing.
Also, $270 million for environmental protection, $290 million in investments in municipalities across the state that are not directly linked to climate change. So a meaningful portion of it is, $300 million is a lot of money, but not the whole thing by any stretch of the imagination. I should also point out that Gov. Baker back in 2016 issued an executive order that called for the creation of a master plan for dealing with climate change, which is due later this year. He did that by executive order. This bill, if it becomes law, would codify that in the Mass. general laws. It would say that the state is going to come up with a master plan for dealing with climate change, and it's going to update it every five years.
Howard: OK, but getting back to this particular bill today — what's the broader context for his decision to file it?
Reilly: Well, obviously the nasty storms that we've been experiencing. I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that Gov. Baker is seeking re-election, and I think this will probably help him with some voters. But also, there has been this ongoing standoff on Beacon Hill between the state Senate, which wants to do more when it comes to tackling climate change, and the House of Representatives, which has been a little more leery of taking drastic action. There is some legislation the Senate has passed actually five times. It's known as CAMP — that's an acronym for Comprehensive Adaptation Management Plan. That bill, if it became law, would also call for the creation of a climate change master plan, but it would do two other really important things. It would create a buyback program so that the state could purchase flood prone lands on the coast and even inland areas that are flooding again and again. And it would also require that everything the state does regulatorily — new licenses, permits, approvals, grant funding — that all of that match this new climate change master plan to the maximum extent practicable. That's a provision which is not included in the legislation that Gov. Baker filed today.
Barbara: OK, so what can we expect next?
Reilly: Well, the big question is what the House is going to do, because nothing becomes law if Speaker Bob DeLeo and his colleagues don't want it to. I've tried contacting the Speaker for comment on what he thinks of this. Haven't yet heard back. He may still be working his way through the bill. It's 72 pages. Again, a lot of money involved here. The House tends to be more conservative fiscally than the state Senate. But I do think that the weather that we've been getting, and apparently are going to continue to get, looking ahead to next week and the new nor'easter that we apparently have to be bracing for, I think that has created a climate — pun intended — in which action is more likely than it would have been a year or two ago.
Howard: OK, thanks so much Adam.
Reilly: Thanks, Barbara.
Howard: That's WGBH Radio's Adam Riley talking about a new bill introduced by Gov. Charlie Baker that he says is aimed to help fight off the effects of climate change.
