T agrees to pollution fines, upgrades
Making amends for dumping waste into rivers and allowing idling buses to spew fumes in urban areas, the MBTA agreed to pay fines and tighten pollution-control programs in a sweeping settlement announced yesterday by federal and state officials.
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority agreed to pay a $328,000 fine and about $1 million to reduce emissions by retrofitting diesel commuter trains operating out of South Station. The T also agreed to donate a 1-acre strip of property on the banks of the Mystic River so a commuter bike path can be extended to Sullivan Square; and the agency promised to be more environmentally sensitive in its operations.
Separately, Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly announced that the T had agreed to clean up the 37-acre Readville railyard near the city's border with Dedham, which had been contaminated with arsenic, lead, and other pollutants, by mid-May.
"They were a chronic violator," said Robert W. Varney, New England regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, referring to the T. But, he said, the T has "really seen this was a problem, and they have taken the issue to heart."
The settlement announced yesterday follows a pattern of the EPA making polluters pay for projects instead of solely fines. In January, the EPA announced a similar deal in which an Everett power company agreed to pay $5 million to lower emissions by Boston schoolbuses and North Station commuter trains, and also to retrofit the Amelia Earhart Dam across the Mystic River to accommodate bikes and pedestrians.
Yesterday's settlement, which was put together by the EPA, the Justice Department, and the US attorney's office, "marks the end of an era" when buses belched dirty exhaust and were allowed to idle for too long, said MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo.
The primary violations leading to the settlement included some 55 instances at bus maintenance facilities in Boston, Roxbury, Medford, and Lynn where buses were left idling for more than five minutes at a time, the limit under state law except when temperatures drop below 20 degrees. In one case at a maintenance facility in a Roxbury neighborhood, a bus was left running for more than an hour. The EPA also accused the T of letting rainwater contaminated with oil, grease, and metals to drain from repair yards into area rivers.
Pesaturo said bus idling times are now strictly monitored, but vehicles are getting cleaner regardless. Two-thirds of the bus fleet will be converted to high-tech, low-emission vehicles by the end of this year, most using compressed natural gas, and the remaining buses will be equipped with filters and retrofitted to maximize use of low-sulfur diesel fuel. Klaire Allen, an activist with Alternatives for Community and Environment, an advocacy group on environmental issues in urban neighborhoods such as Roxbury, said the settlement was particularly satisfying because several dozen fourth-graders staged a protest in 1997, complaining about pollution from idling buses.Laurie Stillman, executive director of the Asthma Regional Council, said that one in five households with children in New England report cases of asthma; and air pollution exacerbates the condition. "We want to see environmental controls out there so this epidemic is brought under control," she said. Catherine Smith, a senior enforcement counsel at the EPA, said all the measures would probably cost the T between $3 million and $4 million over several years. But Pesaturo noted that the T would have to spend the money on pollution controls anyway. He said the federal government requires that trains lower emissions by 2007, for example, "so we'll actually be ahead of the curve."
Under the terms of the settlement, the T will not only limit idling and tighten pollution controls in all its operations, but also retrofit 33 commuter rail locomotives so they can use low-sulfur diesel fuel, which the EPA says should reduce 460 tons of air pollution over three years.
The donation of the strip of MBTA-owned property along the Mystic River will complete a vital link in a commuter bike path between Draw 7 park in Somerville and Sullivan Station, said Bryce Nesbitt, a member of the Somerville Community Path organization. A path through the MBTA yard also will connect with future parkland development at Assembly Square, he said.
Anthony Flint can be reached at flint@globe.com.
