SPRINGFIELD — Public health leaders, along with city and state officials, are continuing to fight a recent ruling that breathes life into the controversial biomass plant proposal by Palmer Renewable Energy.
On June 25, City Council President Michael Fenton joined state Sen. Adam Gomez (D-Springfield), and representatives from Arise for Social Justice and the Public Health Institute of Western Mass., for a webinar about PRE’s proposal.
The purpose of the gathering was to provide updates on the proposal’s current status and how community leaders intend to stop the plant from being built in the city.
“The Springfield community members, leaders and public health advocates have been advocating against a proposed biomass plant in the Indian Orchard neighborhood in Springfield since 2009,” said Jessica Collins, the executive director of the Public Health Institute of Western Mass. “We thought this advocacy had been successful, but recently the project was resurrected, which is concerning to many of us.”
The project’s journey has been long and arduous.
According to previous Reminder Publishing reporting, the city originally granted a special permit to PRE in 2008 for the buildout of a biomass power plant at 1000 Page Blvd. in East Springfield. Since that time, the council and PRE have gone back-and-forth in court as opposition for the plant among councilors and residents continued to grow.
In 2021, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection revoked the air permit it granted PRE in 2012, ostensibly ending any chance of the project from advancing. But the project is now revived after the Massachusetts Appeals Court decided that PRE’s previously expired permits for the 35-megawatt biomass power plant project were actually valid due to a post-Recession law meant to stimulate development.
In response to this ruling, the City Council — which has been battling against PRE for 14 years — recently voted 7-0 in favor of appealing the court’s decision. The fight now heads to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, where the council has already filed the request for an appeal.
“We are hopeful that the SJC will hear our case and put an end to this seemingly interminable dispute,” said Fenton in a previous statement. “The law in Massachusetts says a building permit is only good for six months, but the developer contends that a building permit from almost 14 years ago is still valid. Allowing such an old permit to avoid expiration would be, in my opinion, the definition of an absurd result. It’s time to let this bad idea go.”
While they wait and see if SJC will hear the council’s appeal, officials and advocates are trying everything in its power to halt the project in its tracks.
At the webinar, Gomez said the current Next Generation Roadmap Act, which was signed into law by former Gov. Charlie Baker in 2021, requires municipal lighting plants to source an increasing percentage of their energy from non-carbon emitting sources. The problem, however, is that biomass is included on that list.
“That means starting Jan. 1, 2026, six months from now, burning biomass would be counted as clean energy sourced by MLPs, despite the fact that it emits more CO2 than coal and gas and contributes significantly to air pollution,” Gomez said. “That’s a loophole.”
Developers from Palmer Renewable Energy have built their business model around signing power purchase agreements with MLPs. At one point, Gomez said they had contracts lined up with MLPs for 75% of the power.
“Those contracts have been canceled, but if the loophole stays open, those contracts could be renegotiated,” Gomez said. “And if we don’t close the loophole, this polluting facility may finally have the financial lifeline it needs to become a reality, and we need to stop it now.”
In an attempt to kill that lifeline, Gomez and state Rep. Orlando Ramos (D-Springfield) submitted two bills to remove subsidies for wood-burning in Massachusetts’ ratepayer-funded clean energy programs.
One of the bills would close a loophole that allows MLPs to count biomass power toward their climate and clean energy goals, while the second would limit subsidies for wood heating in the state’s alternative portfolio standard.
“It is long overdue that the Legislature reaffirms our commitment to protecting the environment and removes subsidies from our clean energy programs that allow for wood-burning and woody biomass to continue polluting our environment,” Gomez said in a previous statement about the bills. “I am proud to sponsor this bill in the Senate and fight for changes that directly impact my community, and hope that this will be the year we can get it over the finish line.”
Health advocates across the region are mirroring the urgency set forth by Fenton and Gomez. For years, public health leaders have argued that the biomass plant would exacerbate air pollution in a community that was ranked the fourth worst asthma capital in the nation in 2024 and the worst in 2019.
Matthew Sadof, a pediatric physician at Baystate Medical Center, said that air pollution decreases life expectancy at the same level that cigarette smoke does, according to 2018 studies by the American College of Cardiology, American Heart Association, World Heart Federation and the European Society of Cardiology.
He noted that more air pollution causes severe adverse health effects in adults and children, including increased cardiovascular disease, lung disease, worse asthma and an increase in autism.
Here in the Pioneer Valley, the region’s geography and highways already make it easier to trap air pollution caused by events like climate change and wildfires, according to Sarita Hudson, the senior director of strategy and development for the Public Health Institute of Western Mass.
A buildout of the biomass plant would exacerbate the issue, said Hudson and Sadof, especially following the federal government’s recent decision to terminate a $20 million EPA grant and a $1 million asthma prevention grant.
“The science is clear; adding more pollutions to our air will make all of us sicker,” Sadoff said. “This plan cannot move forward.”
As of press time, Fenton said the Conservation Law Foundation — the council’s representatives — are planning to send a letter to SJC with signatures from a bevy of community organizations and officials that urges the SJC to hear the council’s appeal.
He said that the letter was still on draft stages last week.
“You’ve got my word … there will be every appeal that can possibly be taken on a local level, so long as I am still here, and so long as the members of the City Council that have continued this fight still have the energy to pursue it,” Fenton said. “And we do.”
