House OKs bill to fix glitch in tidelands law
The Massachusetts House of Representatives yesterday voted to fix a glitch in state environmental law that held billion-dollar implications for developers and land owners.
Ever since the Supreme Judicial Court ruled in February in a case brought by Cambridge residents against the developers of the huge NorthPoint development, the ownership and legitimacy of the titles of thousands of acres of land and new and old buildings on former tidelands had been under a cloud.
The court ruled that state environmental regulators lacked the authority to decide that projects in certain locations, such as NorthPoint, were exempt from stringent regulation of land near public waterways. That raised questions about previous rulings the state had made for other developments.
Yesterday, the House passed a bill that clarifies the status of existing titles and marginally increases oversight of future projects on filled tidelands. The legislation is similar to a measure Governor Deval L. Patrick had filed soon after the SJC decision, but some House members had sought to expand the regulation process significantly, adding a new agency to scrutinize the public benefits included in development projects.
The Senate is expected to approve this bill soon.
Both the secretary of energy and environmental affairs, Ian Bowles, and the chief executive of a real estate industry organization yesterday said they approved of the action. "I congratulate the Legislature on settling the issue . . . and lifting the cloud off the title of thousands of property owners in Boston and across the Commonwealth," said Bowles.
David I. Begelfer, head of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties' Massachusetts chapter, called the bill passed by the House "a very good compromise."
"It does put some other obligations on developers, but those are not unreasonable," he said.
Among other provisions, the bill, if passed and signed by Patrick, would ensure that groundwater problems are addressed when new projects are constructed. Under the new law, the secretary of the environment would assess the public benefits of a project located on filled tidelands and make recommendations about their adequacy.
Thomas C. Palmer Jr. can be reached at tpalmer@globe.com.
