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🌧️Snowflakes and raindrops, then just rain, with highs around 39. Sunset is at 5:29 p.m.
Looking for State of the Union coverage? NPR has five quick takeaways and a full annotated fact check.
The snow stopped falling about 36 hours ago, but cleanup efforts — including plowing, shoveling and power restoration — are still underway. As of this morning 158,000 households are without power in Massachusetts, primarily across the Cape, Islands and South Shore. Crews are using pressure washers to remove “cement-like snow” from equipment at a substation, said Doug Foley, president of electric operations for the utility company Eversource. Plymouth Town Manager Derek Brindisi urged residents to help their neighbors if they can.
“I talked to our fire chief and police chief, who’ve been both working for each one of those departments, respectively about 25 and 30 years, and they both said they’ve never seen a storm like this,” Brindisi told GBH’s Marilyn Schairer. “[It’s] probably the most challenging storm in at least the last 20-plus years.”
Also: if you need something to make you smile this morning, check out these photos, captured by GBH’s Arthur Mansavage, of people sledding on the Boston Common.
Four things to know today
1. ICE will no longer try to build a detention center in Merrimack, New Hampshire, not far from the Massachusetts border. People in Merrimack have protested ICE’s plans, and Gov. Kelly Ayotte said she spoke with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem about her opposition last week. “I thank Secretary Noem for hearing the concerns for the town of Merrimack and for the continued cooperation between DHS and New Hampshire law enforcement to secure our northern border, keep dangerous criminals off our streets and ensure our communities are safe,” Ayotte said in a statement.
“My gut reaction is that this is a victory. It means there’s one less spot where ICE will be able to warehouse people,” Boston immigration attorney Robin Nice told GBH’s Sarah Betancourt, adding that many people detained in Massachusetts likely would have been held there. “The administration is creating this real false choice where they’re making people think that they need to choose between truly a warehouse for people in their own backyard versus a warehouse for people far away. And I think that’s a false choice, because option C is: none of that.”
2. Roughly eight months out from November’s election, 56% of Massachusetts residents who responded to a University of New Hampshire Survey Center poll said they’d support a ballot question that would cap rent increases at 5% every year.
And: 58% of respondents said they either somewhat or strongly supported another measure that would bring the Massachusetts state tax rate down from 5% to 4%. The top two issues survey respondents listed as their top priorities were cost of living (28% of respondents) and housing (24%.)
3. Workers have started cutting down trees and vegetation on the eastern side of the Cape Cod Canal, clearing the way for construction of the new Sagamore Bridge. Later this spring, they will dig holes 100 feet deep and test new foundations. Just don’t expect to see anything completed by summer. Luisa Paiewonsky, executive director of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation’s Megaprojects Delivery Office, said the state is looking at testing through 2027 and opening the bridge to traffic in 2033.
“We hope that people will be patient with us as they hear a little bit of noise over the spring or summer,” Paiewonsky told our colleagues at CAI. “It is all toward our ultimate goal of replacement of the Sagamore Bridge.” In the meantime, the 90-year-old Bourne and Sagamore bridges remain open to traffic, and Provincetown ferries and CapeFLYER trains start in May.
4. State Sen. Jason Lewis, a Winchester Democrat who helped push the state’s millionaire’s tax, announced he won’t be seeking re-election this year. Lewis has served in the state legislature since 2009, first as a state representative and then as a senator.
“I’m not someone who believes in term limits, but I also don’t believe in lifetime tenure for people in elected office,” Lewis said. “I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot of what I set out to do, especially in the area of education policy and school funding, and I think now is a good time for me to go into the next chapter of my life, whatever that may be.”
Catching the Codfather: Heroes and Villains
By Ian Coss, host of The Big Dig and Catching the Codfather
If you go to the seafood section of a U.S. grocery store, you will find all manner of flaky white fish: fresh, frozen, whole, filleted, prepared. And if you look closely you will also see that most of that fish is not caught in American waters, or by American boats. So what happened? Why is it hard to find local cod even on Cape Cod? And who is to blame?
In episode three of Catching The Codfather, we enter a turbulent and uncertain period for New England’s iconic fishery — the 1990s — when the limits of the ocean become increasingly apparent, and the future management of that ocean becomes increasingly controversial. There are lawsuits and protests, outrage and unemployment.
This is also a part of the story where it’s tempting to seek moral clarity. We have,of course, our ambitious fish dealer, our principled government bureaucrat, our hard-charging environmentalist — and depending on your point of view, each might seem like a simple hero or villain. Yet I’ve found that every one of these players believes they are the righteous party, acting to protect the fishery.
This is the kind of story I am drawn to. It’s what captured my imagination back in our first season about The Big Dig. I went into that project expecting to find a crooked politician or contractor who had turned a beautiful idea into a bitter mess. Instead I found a vastly more complicated and interesting story about flawed systems, perverse incentives and vicious cycles — a story in which there are many possible heroes and many possible villains. I hope that same kind of complexity comes across in this episode.
Listen to the new episode of Catching the Codfather here.
Dig deeper:
-Full podcast: Catching The Codfather
-Catching the Codfather: The not-so-secret sauce
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