City Council - Regular Meeting

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For the record, my name is Brian Worrell, District 4 City Councilor. I'm the chair of the Boston City Council Committee on Environmental Justice, Resiliency, and Parks. Today is September 10, 2026. The exact time is 3.02 PM. This hearing is being recorded, is also being live streamed at boston.gov backslash city-council-tv and broadcast on Xfinity, channel 8, RCN channel 82, and Fios channel 964. Written comments may be sent to the committee email at ccc.ep at boston.gov and will be made part of the record and available to all counselors. Public testimony will be taken at the end of this hearing. Individuals will be called on in the order in which they signed up and will have two minutes to testify. If you are interested in testifying in person, please add your name to the sign up sheet near the entrance of the chamber. If you're looking to testify virtually, please email our central staff liaison, shanepack, at shane.pac, at boston.gov for the link and your name will be added to the list. Today's hearing is on, docket number 1241. Order for a hearing to examine waste transfer facilities, illegal dumping, environmental justice, and fair housing impacts in residential and mixed-use neighborhoods. The matter was sponsored by Councilor Culpepper and Councilor Mejia and was referred to the committee on June 24, 2026. Today, I'm joined by Councilor Culpepper, and I believe Councilor Murphy was here as well. First, I will go to my council colleague, the original co-sponsor, for opening comments, then to public testimony, and then to the panel. Councilor Culpepper, the floor is now yours.

Good afternoon. Thank you, Chair Rowell, for holding this hearing. Thank you to Councilor Mejia for co-sponsoring this docket. Thank you to my colleagues. Thank you to my colleagues and our panelists and the members of the public for today's hearing. I filed docket number 1241 to examine the concentration of waste transfer and waste handling facilities in residential and mixed-use neighborhoods, particularly in Roxbury, and the resulting environmental justice, public health, quality of life, and fair housing practices and fair housing impacts. For decades, residents of Roxbury and Dorchester have dealt with the consequences of illegal dumping, disinvestment, and the concentration of environmentally burdensome uses. Today, residents living near facilities continue to experience truck noises, truck traffic, odors, air pollution, rodents, debris, and public safety concerns. These burdens affect whether people can walk safely through their neighborhoods, open their windows. Let me just say this again. This determines whether folks can open their windows, enjoy their homes, and raise their family in a healthy environment. The eight-alarm fire at Resource Facility on Girard Street in March 2025 demonstrated the potential danger of locating large waste processing operations close to homes in densely populated neighborhoods. That fire required 150 firefighters and caused an estimated $4 million in damage. Even when facilities comply with their permits, we must still examine the effect of concentrating several of them in the same community. We must also ask who benefits from these facilities and who bears their consequences. Waste generated elsewhere in Boston and surrounding municipalities, including Cambridge, has been transported to Roxbury. Let me say that again. Waste that has been generated elsewhere in Boston and in surrounding municipalities, including Cambridge. We bring waste from Cambridge to Roxbury, has been transported to Gerard Street and others. Communities that have historically experienced disinvestment should not be expected to carry a disproportionate share of the region's environmental burdens. This is, for me, also a fair housing issue. A family's ability to obtain safe and healthy housing is affected when residential neighborhoods are surrounded by uses that generate pollution, truck traffic, noise, odors, and safety risks. Boston has committed to affirmatively furthering fair housing, but that commitment must be reflected in zoning, permitting, enforcement, and land use decisions. Today, I hope we can better understand the history of these facilities, the effects on residents, the adequacy of existing regulations, and the changes needed to prevent any neighborhood from becoming a regional dumping ground. That includes considering stronger monitoring and enforcement. That includes changes to zoning, appropriate buffers between waste facilities and residential areas, and a more equitable regional approach to managing waste. I look forward to hearing from our panelists and discussing how Boston can protect residents while advancing environmental justice and fair housing Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Councillor. I want to thank everyone for being here. This conversation is about quality of life and equity and who has the right to breathe clean air. The right to enjoy a gathering in your backyard without being bombarded with the smell of trash. Right now we know that some neighborhoods enjoy those rights more than others. Neighborhoods like Roxbury. Not only have a history of disproportionate waste dumping, but they also have more transfer stations than other neighborhoods. One of our priorities must be stricter enforcement of quality of life standards across the board. And part of that is ensuring an equitable approach to how the city decides where to locate trash transfer stations. State Senator Liz Miranda has also submitted a written letter of testimony regarding the continued operation of the Howard Transfer Station at 66 Norfolk Street in Roxbury. It's a two-page letter, and I encourage the counselors and the public to read it in full. In the interest of time, I just want to highlight some key words from her statement. Quote. The Howard Transfer Station Facility, operated by Allied Waste Services under its parent company, Republic Services, has long been the subject of concern from residents regarding odors, truck traffic, trash, and debris, impacts on surrounding streets and infrastructure, and other persistent quality of life and environmental conditions. In 2018, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protections intervened and imposed penalties approaching $50,000. My office subsequently wrote to the DEP Commissioner, Bonnie Help, requesting further action, including revocation of the facility's permitting, because residents continue to report conditions and violations despite prior enforcement. However, the DEP has remained that the facility is in compliance, much to our disagreement. My office filed S.529, an act relative to solid waste disposal facilities in environmental justice communities to address the oversaturation of solid waste facilities in environmental justice communities and strengthen the Commonwealth's response to repeated violation. I also filed S. An act limiting toxics release inventory facilities in environmental justice communities to address the broader concentration of environmentally harmful facilities in communities already carrying disproportionate environmental burdens. However, the need for statewide legislation should not prevent the city of Boston from examining and exercising the authority it already possesses. While the commonwealth has the authority over important aspects of environmental permitting, The city has significant power through municipal contracting, zoning, and land use decisions, and the condition established for companies seeking to do business with Boston. This transfer station is not only within an environmental justice population, is within feet of a public housing development, an elementary school, and a playground. I respectfully urge the city council and the administration to conduct a comprehensive review of Boston's contractual and procurement relationship with Allied Waste Services, Republic Services, and related entities. Where legally permissible, the city should examine its authority to amend, rebid, condition, or terminate contracts. The city should also examine whether its existing zoning and land use framework provides sufficient protection against the continued concentration of waste transfer facilities and similar industrial use within environmental justice communities and residential or mixed use neighborhoods. I wholeheartedly agree with Senator Miranda and I look forward to exploring with my colleagues and community advocates how we can better use the city's authority to address these inequities. I am now also joined by my other colleagues, Councilor Flynn and Councilor Fitzgerald. I'll go to my council colleagues for any opening statements, starting with Councilor Murphy. Councilor Murphy, the floor is yours.

thank you chair and thank you to the advocates and the panelists who were here and for waiting we had a longer hearing earlier but this is an important conversation i'm here to listen learn more and support how we can make sure that every neighborhood gets the same respect across the city because that's important so thank you for being here and sharing your knowledge with me today Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. I also want to acknowledge that Councilor Louis-Jan has also joined us. I'm not sure who came next, but I'll go Councilor Fitzgerald, then Councilor Flynn, then Councilor Louis-Jan.

Thank you, Chair. And thank you, panelists, for being here today. It's great to see you all. Trista and Marcos, I know I've sat with you And we've sort of gone over this in depth. And so look forward to see it here on this floor. And obviously, my old colleague, John, great to see you here as well. Trusted and always look to you for advice. So it is an issue that faces our residents for the folks living next to industrial areas, I think specifically up next to Newmarket. uh, Republic services and the waste and the issues that it causes in that direct neighborhood of my district. Um, and so look forward to continue to, to rehash those issues as well as talk about what we can do to mitigate them. So thank you guys for being here. Thanks, Jeff. Thank you.

Uh, council Flynn floors now yours. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you to the panel for being here for the important work you're doing across the city. Um, I'm here to listen to the panel to learn more about this subject, But I do want to highlight that, as John mentioned, John Fitzgerald, the Newmarket area is pretty close to my house as well. It does have an environmental impact, as does the highway system in and around Andrew Square. But the other main issue I wanted to focus on, or at least address, is the environmental challenges we have in Chinatown, the Leather District, the South End. But Chinatown has one of the highest asthma rates of any neighborhood in New England, actually. And it's literally on top of the highway system, just a short walk from South Station with a train system. And the buses are 93, 95. I mean, yeah, the Mass Pike, the truck route from Maine to Florida, basically. But the environmental impact it has on that neighborhood is excessive, and it's an issue that I want to continue to work on, but I want to say thank you for doing important work in various neighborhoods of the city. Mr. Chair, thank you. Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Louis-Gen, the floor is yours.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and apologies for the delay and start, but I want to really thank you for the work that you're doing in highlighting the environmental justice issues in black and brown communities, especially that too often have to live and experience environmental racism that often leads to dire health consequences we're talking about heightened asthma rates um cardiovascular issues and i know that on the other hand the city is trying to address these gaps and so thinking about placements of some of our facilities is important i want to thank all of you we've met before on this topic and looking forward to talking more and seeing how we can be helpful to really get some of the root causes that we see that are really harming our neighborhoods and so i appreciate your advocacy and look forward to hearing more from the panel thank you mr chair

Thank you. Now we'll go to, we have three video testimonies. We'll jump into those and then go to the panel list afterwards. So if Ethan, if you wanna play.

Hi, my name is Diana Salazar and I live in Roxbury over 15 years in this community. I have seen this neighborhood change in many ways, but there is still a long way to go. Though my involvement in community organizing I have learned more about the history of this area including the long-standing issue of waste handling and transfer operation happening right next to our next to our homes. For decades, this community has been forced to deal with this impact at the transfer station. The waste processing, the odors, the fires, and the hazardous conditions have affected residents' health, safety, and quality of life. This is not new. It is a long battle that has been passed down through generations, and it has reflected how Roxbury has been neglected and treated compared to other neighborhoods. We are calling attention to the transfer station and the buffer zones that are supposed to protect us. We need the city to take a real critical stand on this issue. The community is acting for a clear process toward repair, not temporary fix, not silence, but meaningful action that acknowledge the harm and begin to correct it. Roxbury deserves clean air, safe streets, and the same level of protection and investment that other neighborhoods receive. It is time for the city to step up and address this directly.

To the honorable chair and members of the committee, my name is Isabel Valentin and I am a resident of Roxbury, zip code 02119. I am writing in strong support of the order for a hearing to examine waste transfer facilities, illegal dumping, environmental justice, and fair housing impacts in residential and mixed-use neighborhoods. On March 16, 2025, an alarm fire broke out of the facility on Gerrard Street. About 150 firefighters responded, three were hospitalized, and the damage was estimated at $4 million. I live less than a mile from this facility. I live within one tenth of a mile of not one but two waste processing facilities, and I have learned to associate the putrid smell that fills the air at night with the loud clanging and crashing that regularly follows it. These are not occasional disruptions. They are a permitted nightly feature of living in this neighborhood well into the early morning hours. This fire is the most recent incident in a much longer story. The geography of waste infrastructure in Boston is intentional. MassDepth facility master files document the clear and unbroken pattern in Boston of It's stretching back more than 65 years, and every era of waste disposal has heavily relied on Roxbury and its immediately surrounding neighborhoods to absorb the environmental burden, which is the precise definition of environmental injustice under Massachusetts Executive Order 552. I work in environmental advocacy, and I am submitting this testimony both as a resident and as someone who spends my working life on exactly these questions. I ask the committee to treat this hearing not as an abstract policy exercise, but as an opportunity to examine what has already happened on Gerrard Street. These siting misuses can pose immediate threats to life, safety, and surrounded housing when sited in populated neighborhoods. This hearing is the appropriate venue to ask why this burden has been concentrated in Roxbury for more than half a century. And I hope this hearing leads to real siting and buffer protections for residential and mixed use neighborhoods like mine. Thank you for your time and attention to this matter.

My name is Latoya and I am a resident of Roxbury. I witnessed one of the fires at the transfer station, and it is something I will never forget. The sky turned dark and gloomy, the smoke spread across the neighborhood, and the air became so polluted that my asthma was triggered for more than two days. I struggled to breathe. And I know I wasn't alone. My neighbors, elders, and children all felt the impact. The smell in this neighborhood has always been terrible because of the transportation, but during and after the fire, it was unbearable. It lingered in our homes, on our streets, and in our lungs. No one should have to smell this. No family, no child, no elder should be forced to live with this level of pollution. It is neglectful, harmful, and it shows how little protection Roxbury has been given. And it's not just me. Numerous residents have complained about the smell, the smoke, the fires, and the constant exposures to hazardous conditions. People talk about it every day. Parents walking their kids to school, neighbors sitting outside, families trying to enjoy their homes, Everyone is feeling it. Everyone is affected. The fire didn't just burn a building, it harmed the people who lived here. Children walking into Orchard Gardens, parents going to work, and neighbors simply trying to breathe were all exposed to toxic air. The fact that this facility continues to operate next to our homes, Despite repeated fires and dangerous conditions shows how overlooked and neglected this community has been. We deserve clean air. We deserve safety. We deserve a city that protects us instead of exposing us to harm. What happened during that fire affected all of us and it cannot be ignored any longer. Thank you for listening.

I just want to thank, um, The residents who submitted their public testimony now will turn it over to the panel. If you want to introduce yourself, starting from John all the way down, and then dive into your presentation. The floor is yours. Thank you, councillors.

John Smith with Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, DSMI. I'm the executive director there.

Good afternoon, councillors. Thank you for having us. My name is Dan O'Brien. I'm a professor in the School of Public Policy at Northeastern University.

Good afternoon. Tristan Thomas, Director of Policy and Law with ACE, Alternatives for Community Environment, Environmental Justice Nonprofit.

Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Marcos Beliche. I'm a resident in the neighborhood, and I'm also on the board for Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative and Dudley Neighbors Incorporated, the community land trust.

Thank you, Councillors, for being here and allowing us to testify on this important issue. I think my role here is to really contextualize this argument and give a little history of DS&I in this. And so for Dudley Street DS&I, Environment has not only ever meant just air and trees and gardens, which we have many of, but it also means houses and people. And so for DS9, we believe that each facet of this environment must be considered in a comprehensive and more integrated way in order to address neighborhood concerns. Our mission is to empower Dudley Street residents to organize and plan for, create and control this high quality and diverse neighborhood in collaboration with our community partners. Councillor Flynn's father was very instructive in helping us launch this organization. We thank him and you for all your efforts in support of us. Like many communities of its kind, this neighborhood has long borne a disproportionate share of the environmental burdens in the city. And many of these burdens persist today. They translate into economic, social, and aesthetic and health problems. Historically, residents in our community also suffered high rates of asthma and bronchitis at roughly twice the rate of the rest of Boston, a disparity that is rooted in decades of disinvestment, illegal dumping, and substandard housing stock that still shapes our public health outcomes in the neighborhood. While most of our residents wouldn't really consider themselves environmentalist or call themselves that, their concerns about health, housing, and economic development have always carried an environmental dimension. For years, highway expansion, which also affects Chinatown, and the concentration of waste transfer stations and the industrial facilities in that area have contributed to elevated air and noise pollution in the neighborhood. Because DSNI focuses on the problems of the community as a whole, It works to show residents how environmental progress and environmental resources can help remedy these problems. This interconnectedness is especially visible in urban settings where housing and economic development are often held back by the cost of environmental cleanup and environmental racism. Urban communities are also more likely to contain indoor environmental hazards such as energy into energy-inefficient buildings, structures that saddle residents with high heating bills, and produce dangerous levels of carbon monoxide. Environmental issues, in other words, affect people both individually and collectively, and that has remained true from the 1980s until today. For DSNI, our first campaign was called Don't Dump on Us, and it attacked these very same issues that we are talking about today. That was our first organizing effort when we started. At the time, that was arson and a lot of disinvestment were rampant in our community. There was trash everywhere, entire rows of houses had been burned out, and these empty parcels became informal dumping grounds. And so that campaign really led us to where we are now today, 40 years later. That campaign did more than clean up land. It built our organizing muscle and public credibility. So today, the S&I can partner with ACE and Northeastern universities and really help empower our residents to tackle these issues. The S&I has long held that raising environmental awareness in the neighborhood is one of the first steps towards better public health and safety. And that belief still guides its work. A cleaner environment supports our residents' health and can also open the door to job creation. Residents deserve a safe, clean environment. The SNI continues to hold that and that they have the power to demand that from you and others and all of the resources in our community that are needed to protect our community. We're working to pass that philosophy on to our community members and we really want to thank you for having us here today. Thank you to the City Council for considering this matter and working with all of us to alleviate these issues caused by this transfer station. Thank you very much.

Anyone else? I'll go next. I want to thank Councillor Culpepper, Chairman Worrell, and all the other city councils here today for the opportunity to share my experience, perhaps the experience of many residents in the neighborhood. As I said earlier, my name is Marcos Beliche. I live at 3 Jarvis Place in Roxbury. i am a member of dsni and dni as i shared earlier and so i came to the neighborhood 25 years ago when i purchased the home there at three jarvis i won't share sort of how i got to become a homeowner but i will share that as i remember as i moved in i imagined weekend brunches and morning coffees on the deck the side of the house. And this idea unfortunately soon came to a halt as I realized the smell of coffee would also be accompanied by the smell of rotting trash. And after a few tries of trying to enjoy a meal outside, this was no longer an option for me. That foul smell became a regular a regular factor to consider even when trying to do yard work on the weekends. On good days when the wind blew in a different direction, I think I took the opportunity to tend to the outside of my house. This has been the story on and off over the past 25 years for me. Much has also changed over those 25 years, but at the same time, much has continued, if not worsened. I also learned as a homeowner in the neighborhood that I couldn't afford to travel over the Fourth of July weekends. I haven't traveled for the last 25 years during those holidays, in part because of the uncontrolled use of fireworks in our neighborhood during those days. I was a former pet owner and also one of those residents that realized that our homes are very old and, you know, we're like built, our homes are built of wood that's nearly 100 years old and very flammable. This was proven true when on a Saturday morning while I was having coffee in my living room, I heard loud crackling and popping noises. like if somebody was making popcorn right in my kitchen. It was an abandoned house down the street at 94, 96 George Street, a development project that had been suddenly halted that caught on fire because of individuals who had broken in and made that place their sleeping quarters. One person died in that fire, or rather, a body was left to burn with that house. To me, like to many of my neighbors, this strategy represented the vulnerability of our community in a time when other social challenges began to compound on what was happening in the vicinity of those trash transfer stations. The desolate, poorly lit, pothole-covered streets that signal no one cares soon became the expanded turf of the mass and cast problem. which continues to this day. Many of us saw it move into and through our streets, foraging for remnants of drug paraphernalia, and going through our trash cans looking for who knows what. The trash transfer areas have never seemed a defendable space. They have only welcomed the expansion of illicit activity. Today, what was once a safe route to school for children at the Mason Elementary School is blocked to prevent such activity and the use of the alley as a public bathroom. From where I stand, the transfer stations have never been monitored or regulated, at least that's what I sort of see, and the problem has only become worse. It has become worse as our community has also grown. Many people live close to the facilities now than 25 years ago. Near-right parcels have been developed, and we even saw the opening of a new middle school and high school just blocks away from these sites. Clifford Park was converted from green natural grass to turf grass, in my mind, an irony in the age of heat islands. As I mentioned, all of this is to try to give you a sense of the urgency. Pollution, whether chemical, airborne, or auditory, seems to be compounded many times over in extreme heat. And this is something that's becoming more and more frequent in Boston. And so this is what neighbors, young and old, those students that now walk from their school down to Mass Ave over to Hampton Street or up to Dudley Street have to navigate day in and day out. The recent fires at the transfer stations tell me that the problem is getting bigger and more intense. This is also why we reached out as members of DSNI to ACE and to Northeastern to join us in our struggle. And this is also why we are here today to ask again and to thank the City Council for joining our community in this struggle. Thank you all for giving me the time.

All right, hi everyone. Thank you for having us, Council Culpepper and Councilor Worrell for bringing us all together and to the other councilors for joining in this conversation and really the privilege to be able to provide, I'm gonna just add some data alongside the stories that my colleagues and friends here are presenting and actually if we could Are we going to get the slides up? Thank you. Appreciate that. So as the slides come up, I'll just summarize real quickly. So what I'm able to offer here to this conversation, so as I mentioned, I'm a professor at Northeastern University. I'm also the principal investigator of a project called Common Senses, which is a collaboration between DSNI, Project Right Incorporated, and Northeastern University's Boston Area Research Initiative, which I direct, as well as the Office for Emerging Technology here in the city in the Department of Innovation Technology. And what we're able to offer to these conversations, which is I think really important and valuable, is we work together with the community to design a network of environmental sensors. So these sensors are throughout the neighborhood around Blue Hill Avenue, and there are 51 that are tracking heat and noise, and there are 23 that are tracking air quality. And you can see on the maps here, they cover a pretty wide space. They don't quite cover the area where the trash transfer station is. It's just to the northeast of the zone you're seeing here on the map. But as I'll go through in a moment, it's close enough to be able to tell us some things. Now, before I get to that, I'm going to just sort of add, let's call it academic context and science to the stories that we've already heard. Because I think the point has already been made pretty clearly. Noxious chemicals are not pleasant. Their formal term is volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, and trash transfer stations produce a lot of them, and they have a lot of impact on well-being. They can trigger asthma. They can trigger dizziness and nausea. I mean, Marcos's stories about not being able to sit on his porch is just clear evidence of that impact that it has on daily life. Depending on what they are, they can be carcinogenic. So they can have long-term impacts that Even if they're not bothering you minute to minute, they are impacting your body in the long term. Beyond that, they generate ozone. So trash transfer stations generate a lot of ozone, which is poisonous, and you don't know you're breathing ozone. That is tasteless. That is smellless. So these are all impacts that are occurring consistently from a trash transfer station, and that's when a trash transfer station is working and doing its job effectively and properly. The problem gets even worse when we talk about days like March 16th, 2025, when there was the eight alarm fire at the Girard Street facility, and it blazed all day, right? And into the night, and in that case, you start generating what we call particulate matter, right? So all of those bad chemicals that don't smell good, right, start to become bigger pieces that are coming out in the fire, And the sensors that we have are able to detect particulate matter. They are not able to detect volatile organic compounds. And I'll come back to that in a moment, because that requires a completely different form of technology. But we are able to see what's happening during a fire. And so this is a map of, on that day, the sensors that we had in place. We had not completely finished the network at that time. And there are about 12 of these sensors running primarily up and down the spine of Blue Hill Avenue. And the fire is up there, just off the map. And there's also... for sake of kind of checking in on everything, there is a Massachusetts DEP monitoring site about a mile and a half away in Roxbury from this space. And we wanted to see if that picked up the signal. Because in theory, that's what that kind of location is supposed to be able to do. It's supposed to see these sorts of things. And we wanted to see if it did. And to a point that Marcos made when he was talking about on certain days, the wind is blowing the right way. And in other days, the wind is not blowing the right way. On this particular day, from Marcus's perspective, the wind was blowing the right way. It was blowing from south to north. It should have pushed most of what was happening at the trash transfer station away from this neighborhood. So, I mean, the good side of that is it probably impacted the neighborhood less than it would have otherwise. The only bad side is that we're going to see less evidence from these sensors of what happened. But, as we'll see in a moment, we can still see evidence. So this chart represents the amount of particulate matter that the sensors saw over the course of 24 hours on March 16th on that day. And now there's a couple things you can note here. The first thing you might see is this bump at 4 a.m. at that one sensor. We're not really sure what that is. That might be a large vehicle. That actually could be a trash vehicle. It could be any other sort of vehicle. right next to a sensor emitting for a little while, like idling, but that's probably not related to the fire. But then if we look later in the day, we start to see all of the sensors come up and sensors that are further north, so further towards Dudley Commons on the Blue Hill Avenue spine, are tending to have a greater impact, which gives evidence that this is coming from the fire that's right up the street there. And it's also worth noting, Without me pointing it out, you wouldn't necessarily notice it, but the MADEP site that's a mile and a half away shows very little, if any, evidence of anything because it's too far away to be able to account for what's happening in this neighborhood that's being actively impacted. which is a really important limitation that we should be keeping in mind when we use tools like that as the evidence that might override stories like what Marcos and Isabel and Diana and Latoya were sharing. And so basically you see that this rises and continues for the length of the fire up until about midnight, and it rises above briefly at one of the sensors the EPA daily average limit. So it does get to a point where the EPA would indicate as fully hazardous, again, the wind is blowing north, right? So most of the pollutants in this case are actually ending up in the south end. So in Councilor Fitzgerald in your district. And then it comes down and it dies down around 3 a.m. to baseline levels. So that's basically the story of the fire as seen through these sensors. And so just kind of simple summary, right? There are elevated levels of particulate matter at the trash transfer station, most notable north of Quincy Street. They started around noon, they escalate through midnight and dissipate around 3 a.m. It mostly didn't appear like it reached EPA levels in the neighborhood, but it was notable. And it's also worth noting that the Roxbury EPA monitor did not notice very much. So then the points I really actually wanna make is not only that this shows us some evidence despite the wind going in the wrong direction, despite this sensor system not being built to track these things, right, not being built to track VOCs. not being built to track the trash transfer station specifically, right? They're set up all south of the trash transfer station. So what I take away from this is not only some evidence, but more guidance on what we should actually be doing, right? Particulate matter is not what we're tracking, or no, sorry, we are tracking particulate matter. That is not what you would want to track if your goal is to regulate a trash transfer station. And so if you want to do that, there are other types of sensors to do that. And actually experts, some of my colleagues at Northeastern University have those tools and would be more than happy to collaborate on a project to better understand what the impact of the trash transfer station is. And so the second piece too to that is that these sensors are not arranged to track the trash transfer station. That requires actually a very thoughtful arrangement of sensors in a couple of different directions to make sure you're capturing, depending on which way the wind blows, you're capturing it in any direction, you can really tell where it's coming from. And that would be critical to actually monitoring and regulating this piece of infrastructure that is right alongside a residential community. And as I noted, being that the wind was blowing in the opposite direction, This, what I'm going to call opportunistic analysis, right, that kind of became available to us was limited by happenstance. So, yeah, I'll just conclude by saying, right, we have some evidence here that shows some of the impact that's possible based on this fire, but also encouragement to this body and to others who are involved in advocacy and action here to think about how we could partner to better track these types of impacts and build the infrastructure that would really be effective in this way. So thank you.

Thank you, councillors, for having me. Again, Tristan Thomas, director of policy and law for ACE, Alternatives for Community and Environment. For 32 years, ACE has empowered communities with the legal, policy, and organizing tools to fight for environmental justice. And I'm here today to make it clear that the existing facilities are an environmental justice issue, it is a public health issue, and it is a civil rights issue. Environmental justice isn't just about looking at one highway or one trash facility. It's about the total burden that a community carries. When you layer diesel trucks on top of air pollution, on top of noise, on top of pests, on top of fires, and this actually was a fire two weeks ago at the other facility, so there was the The 2025 fire, there was another one two weeks ago. When you layer all that together, you get that compounding effect that Marcos talked about that is greater than the sum of its parts. And in this neighborhood, we don't have to guess about what that looks like. We actually have data from Northeastern, but we also have data from the state's mass and viral screen tool. And so that tool shows us that the immediate census tract is in the 99th percentile for environmental justice cumulative burden. So it's more burden than 99% of all communities across the entire state. It's in the 98th percentile for nitrogen dioxide exposure. It's in the 95th percentile for diesel particulate matter exposure. It's in the 97th percentile for heavy traffic. And the health outcomes reflect this reality. 85th percentile for pediatric asthma, 77th percentile for premature mortality. These aren't abstract numbers. These are children who are struggling to breathe. These are families who are losing years of their lives. And these facilities have never undergone a comprehensive environmental review. And so we must ask, why are we adding more pollution to a community that is already at its breaking point? On April 3rd, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his infamous I've Been to the Mountaintop speech. He was in Memphis, Tennessee, standing with sanitation workers who were fighting for dignity and justice. These workers were fighting for better wages, but also better working conditions. Many black workers were killed due to the negligence of the facility owners. That makes me think about the fires in the neighborhood. Dr. King was assassinated the very next day, on April 4, 1968. His final days were spent integrating environmental movement with the economic justice movement and with the civil rights movement. Today, we are fighting that same fight, the fight for clean air, for healthy neighborhoods, and for thriving families. Our challenge to the council is this. How do we meet the moment today? Will you stand with the people of Roxbury, or will you stand by and watch us bear our burdens? We urge you to work with us collaboratively to find a solution that will protect our community's health, our environment, and our civil rights. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Again, I just want to thank the panelists for their work in this space. Thank you for laying out the data and the stories that we're going to be diving in today. I'm going to go to public testimony and then to council questions. So when you hear your name called, please come up to one of the two mics, state your name, where you live, what neighborhood you reside in, or any affiliation. We'll start with Karima Rojas. and then followed by Alex Alex.

Hello, everyone.

All right. My name is Karima and I am speaking as a Roxbury resident regarding the ongoing operations of the Cambridge slash Roxbury transfer station located near Orchard Gardens. According to their own published description, the facility accepts municipal solid waste tires, hazardous waste, and inert materials, and serves as an intermediate collection point where waste is received from residential businesses and community customers and then transported to regional landfills or recycling centers to minimize environmental impact. However, the reality of Roxbury residents, including myself, is the opposite of minimized environmental impact. The transfer station's activities are directly harming our neighborhood. In addition to the fires, hazardous conditions, and toxic odors, the transfer station sits no far from a large field currently being renovated into three basketball courts, two tennis courts, a dog park, a school playground, water splash pads, a football field, and a baseball field. These facilities are meant to serve children, families, and the broader Roxbury community. As a canine specialist, a dog walker, and behavioral technician, mandated reporter for neurodivergent children and residents of Roxbury, I experience putrid, rancid odors late at night, early mornings, and random times in the day, including the smell of decomposing trash, industrial debris, and hazardous materials. These fumes drift into our homes, our backyards, and our streets. Families living in the immediate vicinity are forced to breathe in contaminants that pose serious risk to respiratory and health and overall well-being. The facility sits roughly on 10 acres of land near Orchard Gardens, a residential community with children, elders, and working families. There is no justification for Cambridge's waste, including hazardous materials to be processed in a densely populated neighborhood in Roxbury. This is an environmental injustice and a clear violation of the basic right to clean air. The transfer station website claims to serve residential businesses and residential customers, yet the community most impacted Roxbury residents receives no benefit and bears all of the harm. cambridge's waste management decisions should not come at the expense of our health our safety and quality of life roxbury residents deserve the same protection and environmental standards as any other community so we urge city hall to take swift action to stop this harmful practice and to protect our neighborhood from further exposure thank you thank you

My name is Alex. I'm a resident of Dorchester. I've been involved with DSNI for about a year and a half now, helping them out with their various initiatives, like raising support for the trash transfer initiative that we have going on right now. Thank you so much to the panelists and to the people who have testified. I'm going to take a more macro perspective to tie in your testimony together. The trash transfer facility is one factor in multiple that is impacting this community. If you look at Mass Ave, which is a major artery that connects Dorchester into Boston and Dorchester and Roxbury, already very separated neighborhoods from the rest of the city. Mass Ave is an industrial wasteland. There are miles, it's basically a mile of just pure concrete. We've had various heat issues and you look at this transit quarter and it's just all concrete. It's a massive heat island sink. We have had a conversation about the parks and the schools that are in the area, multiple parks and schools in the area. So we have these transportation facilities putting all this pollution, we have the heat coming out, and then you also have all the vehicles, the U-Haul facility that's right there. It's all just a bunch of heavy duty, heavy utility stuff that is impacting the community in various ways. There's so much space there. We have a housing issue as well in Boston. There's so much space that's being misused that could be used better. I know that DSNI is kind of urging the council to consider zoning as a tool to kind of force the trash transfer facility out of this area. But we should also be considering zoning to see how we can redevelop this area into a way that is more beneficial to the city as a whole, to Roxbury as a whole. not just for housing, but the different kind of facilities that we can have, whether it's like an artist compound where people can go in and learn ceramics, glassmaking, that sort of stuff. There's so much potential in Boston. There's so many people who are willing to do stuff. I've cleaned up 7,000 pounds of garbage around the city of Boston in a year and a half, and most of that has been centered around Dorchester and Roxbury. I think there are about maybe half a dozen empty lots in the half-mile vicinity of the trash transfer facility that are owned by the city. They get used as dumps. It's all your usual stuff, liquor bottles, glass, fast food wrappers, all that sort of stuff. There's just so much utility that is not being utilized. I think we have the ability and the power to do things in a way that we're not currently doing them.

Thank you. Kyle Kieta, followed by Sean O'Connor.

Good afternoon, councillors. My name is Kalamu Kunieta. I'm a lifelong resident of Roxbury and a community organizer with DSNI, and I'm here to speak in support of the effort to remove a long-lasting stain of Boston's neglectful and racist past from our community. The fight is now. The Dudley Street Neighbor Initiative was born because residents said enough. Enough illegal dumping, enough environmental racism, enough of our neighborhood being treated as a place where the city could put things nobody else wanted. Our community organized, reclaimed land, built housing, created gardens, supported local businesses, and proved something powerful. Dudley residents have the right and the ability to determine the future of our neighborhood. But today, there is still a physical reminder of that history sitting in our community, these trash transfer stations. And we have to ask ourselves, how can we say we have transformed our neighborhood if we continue to accept the very burden our movement was created to fight? This is about more than one facility. It's about... It is about health. It is about diesel trucks, noise, traffic, rodents, and the cumulative environmental burdens our residents continue to carry. But most importantly, it is about justice and dignity. Our children deserve clean air, our families deserve healthy neighborhoods, and our community deserves land that serves our future, not an industry that profits from our continued burden. So I believe this is the moment to bring Don't Dump On Us back to the forefront. 45 years ago, Dudley residents said no to being a dumping ground. Today, we have an opportunity to finish what they started. We should close this chapter by removing these transfer stations and reclaiming that land for community-led development, for housing, green space, cultural uses, and opportunities that reflect the vision and need of the people who live there. This is our last stand against dumping and hopefully our final step toward healing this part of our community. We have organized before, we have won before, now's the time to finish this job. Thank you.

Thank you. Sean O'Connor.

Yeah, hi. I'm a local resident. I don't have a lot to add on top of what's been said here, but just particularly to echo that gentleman's comments about living there. I live next to St. Patrick's Church. The noise at night when those trucks whip through 2, 3, 4, 5 AM, it's deafening. I mean, it certainly will wake you up. Fire noises and gunshots or fireworks, it's pretty bad. The smells in the summer are horrific. Like particularly in the summer. I mean it's year-round but particularly in the summer And just that whole neighborhood around Norfolk and Gerrard. I mean they kind of not that they own it But trying to get through there the amount of truck volume gone through there during the day It's just a filthy mess around there I mean certainly you wouldn't want to walk through it or bike through it if you try to cut through with a car Forget it. You're just buying trucks And just to echo what somebody else said, I mean, this neighborhood, I mean, that land could be put to a lot of good use. We see it with the Clifford Park, the new school that's there, what Suffolk are doing with their campus. If we could move this from our location, there's a huge, we could make this, I mean, it's basically a dead zone. We could make it a much better space for the neighborhood. That's all I got. Thank you, guys.

Thank you. Myra Maranza-Corteg.

Hello, everyone. My name is Maranta, and I live right on the border of Dorchester and Roxbury near Upham's Corner. For some background, I came to Boston about three or four years ago from Florida, where we have a lot of lakes, a lot of swamp, and also a lot of dumping. And at some point for years, residents, including myself, were smelling nasty, eggy smells from our local lake with no explanation until one of my teachers said, oh, that's because they're dumping in our lakes. And now, almost four years later, even though I'm in a completely different state, which is supposed to be the most educated state in America, I am facing the same problem of not knowing where unidentified, putrid, and toxic smells are coming from. And truly what's upsetting is I'm not hearing about these issues from community centers or legislators or things like that. I'm hearing this from my best friend up there. And not everybody has an amazing best friend like I do who can clear the air on where we're all on what we're all facing. So it's frightening that as residents, we walk around each day smelling these horrible smells and don't know where it's coming from. Boston is better than this. And we have too many resources for some neighborhoods to be facing toxic smells that we don't know the source of and pollution, while others have clean air. This has been an unidentifiable issue for about four years, all four years that I've lived here. And even as my breathing issues have worsened year after year, and I've been diagnosed with asthma. So I am here today to put an end to this toxic cycle. When I travel to other neighborhoods within Boston, such as or Brookline, I am not bombarded by toxic smells. I'm greeted by luxury and the result of what happens when the city listens to its residents. And as a resident of Dorchester and Roxbury, we deserve the same respect and to play outside, commute, and enjoy our neighborhoods without experiencing the effects of pollution, and even then, not knowing where it comes from. We are your coworkers, your constituents, and we are the city of Boston too. And that concludes my time. Thank you.

Thank you. Renee, followed by Vickiana.

Good afternoon, councillors. My name is Rene Mardones. I am an organizer with Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, also a resident of Boston. I've been lucky to be able to talk to many of the residents in the neighborhood. Ocean Garden, Dudley Town Common, and have you heard today, there are a lot of concern about these facilities, Republic Service and Roxbury Resource, who is the recycling place. We heard about the fires a couple of weeks ago. It was another in the Republic site. So I think I'm here to propose how we can work on the solutions. I think if you talk to the neighbors, they really would like to see the relocation of these two facilities, like how we can move them to another place where they're better. for the work that they're doing. So I think one of the pieces that we would like to request to this committee is how we can work together, neighbors, stakeholder, elected official, the administration, in reviewing the zoning code. I think it's important to do a zoning amendment for that area. I think many, many years we have spent on trying to figure out how we can make sure this neighborhood is, you know, like provide a healthy space for our children, for our community. We have more than two school, you know, like the, you know, Orchard Garden, their new middle school in the area. So I think there are a lot of concern about that. So I will request a couple of things to this year. One is to extend the comment period at least to the end of next week. We have a lot of community members who weren't able to be here because the time, many of them work during the day. So we would like to, you know, see if they can submit testimonies through the website through a letter. So that's one of the requests. And the second one is can we put together a listening session in the community? The SNIAs, Northeastern, I think we're all willing to work together and hear directly from the neighborhood and from the neighbors. So those are the two concrete requests we have for this committee. I'm looking forward to do some zoning amendment. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Vickiana Pettitom. I am a community organizer with Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, also here in support of the relocation of the trash transfer stations located in Roxbury. Obviously, you've heard from so many people already about the disproportionate impacts, health impacts of having to live next to two trash transfer stations and the level of environmental racism that is incorporated within these decisions. DSNI residents first formed together as John mentioned in our Don't Dump on Us campaign against illegal dumping and it is very unfortunate that It seems now that that dumping has now become legalized, and it's very important that we begin to take the steps to not only repair this harm that has been taking place over the last few decades, we have to not only address the harm already done, but do everything in our power to ensure that it doesn't continue by relocating these services. I'd also like to point out that there's been a fire mentioned that happened in March of last year in 2025. I'd like to note that several more fires have taken place since that big fire in March. one of the representatives of Resource Roxbury came to one of our organizing meetings and they themselves let us know that they've had several small fires recently in the last few months that they themselves could not identify what the source is and so we as community members are blind to what is actually going on within these facilities. We don't know what's burning. We don't know what their processes are. And there are no mechanisms to actually hold these companies accountable. And that's for Resource Roxbury in particular. As well as I'd like to note that Republic Services, their workers themselves are not feeling cared for by the company and not feeling protected by the company and have been on strike multiple times about the hazardous conditions that they themselves are working in. It's very clear to us as community members that the only thing that these trash transfer stations care about is profit. They're not caring about the health of our communities. They're not caring about contributing positively to the community that they are taking massive amounts of space in, and they are not communicating with us in a transparent matter. We are really relying on city council to step in and do that due diligence work of asking these hard questions and getting to the root of why are these transfer stations here and not anywhere else. As much as we'd like to, the zoning would like to classify that area as an industrial zone and there are other industrial businesses in the area, the truth of the matter is There are tons of schools, there are tons of houses. It is way more residential and commercial than anything else. I'd really like us to take the time to re-examine what the zoning for that area actually is. Not what it's put on paper, but how people actually live and move about that space so that it can meet the needs of our community members. Neighbors deserve more, we deserve clean air, and we deserve a zoning plan that actually fits with how our people move, how we use and go about our daily lives within Roxbury. we can be creative, we can be innovative, and we can find a new spot for these trash transfer stations to do its job in a way that Roxbury residents don't have to suffer the burden of it. Thank you.

Thank you. Asia, followed by Denise.

Hello City Councilors, good afternoon. I know you've seen me all day. But my name is Asia Jackson, a lifelong resident of Roxbury, also a stakeholder. I'm also a part of Boston Public Health Commission's board. I'm also a part of BMC's SEAL Community Health Advocacy Board. And I'm here because Roxbury has been carrying this environmental burden for decades. We not only see it, we breathe it. Our families live with it. On March 16th, 2025, we experienced an eight alarm fire. Not two, eight. Residents questioned whether the monitoring systems actually captured the smoke and pollutants traveled. And now we've had another fire. So I have to ask how many fires, how much smoke, how much exposure before we say enough? Roxbury already experiences a disproportionate respiratory health burden, but where is a neighborhood level data telling us exactly what residents are exposed to? And if our monitoring systems aren't capturing where residents actually are, how can we know what was impacted or who was impacted? DSNI is doing the work, but DSNI cannot do it alone. We need public health environment agencies, hospitals, community organizers, residents, and everyone at the table, especially city counselors. We need independent monitoring, real-time data, health tracking, transparency, and enforceable protections because clean air is clean justice. Roxbury should not have to become sicker before someone decides to measure the harm. We are not a dumping ground. We are not a sacrifice zone. We are community and our health must matter before development. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, good afternoon. My name is Denise January. I work in Roxbury. I'm the coordinator for the Environmental Justice Assistance Network at Alternatives for Community and Environment. I work in Roxbury. I am a Brookline resident, but I very much am involved in the community. And I just wanted to say that originally I'm from California, where we have experienced so many wildfires, where there's smoke in the air. You can't be outside. uh so you know just poor air quality all around and increasingly so just due to climate change and it like it was very disheartening to hear of the two fires and other instances at the facility that have happened march 2025 and even two weeks ago where the other facility which was owned by re-energy happened it just feels so disheartening to know that these are not you know, caused by like climate change or environmental climate related weather issues. And that, you know, we can today like take proactive action to really decrease the amount of effects that we're going to see because we really don't want to see any more, you know, fires taking place in the community. Last week, I was just walking around where these facilities are and the neighborhoods where these residents reside just on a weekday, hanging out together outside in the parks. Meanwhile, if you go by the facilities, I would phrase it as maybe an industrial wasteland where there's so many auto body shops, these two trash facilities just in the middle of this residential neighborhood. It's very apparent that the people who live there really try to avoid this area as much as they can. So we have called on the Department of Environmental Protection to really call awareness to these issues to hopefully get more searches done at these facilities, take more of that state-level action. But as Senator Miranda had stated in her testimony, the DEP commissioner, as far as she is aware, that the facilities are both in compliance. unfortunately doesn't really seem like much is going to happen with the EP without you know maybe us putting more pressure on this campaign so we respectfully urge the City Council to you know really take into account the impacts on residents and we really do want to you know advocate with you guys and work together to really you know come up with some community solutions and really mitigate the impacts of these facilities yeah thank you thank you

I just want to thank all the residents who came and lent their voice to this conversation. We will definitely keep comments open. And if anyone wants to send in written or virtual testimony, the email address is ccc.eep at boston.gov. That is ccc.eep at boston.gov. And happy to work with the sponsor, Council Culpepper, on coordinating a listening session in the community. open to those two things, but comments, virtual testimony will be open. I'll now go to my council colleagues and order arrivals, starting with the lead sponsor, Councilor Culpepper, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I wanted to talk with Professor O'Brien for a couple of minutes before I move on to other witnesses. And it seems like there's been a pretty long history this facility, this Republic, and there's been different efforts to try and move Republic. What have you seen and how do you think the best approach to begin to move Republic from the area where it is now, the residential area?

I think that's a great question. The ideas around reimagining zoning that have been brought up by a number of the residents, I think that's really sort of the avenue here, the ticket, because we struggle with this situation where we might zone and say something is industrial. And I know it's not really the case in this case, but we could imagine situations where a trash transfer station is placed originally in a location that is away from residential zones. Now, again, historically, we know that this one was placed in a place that was already residential. But even if that's the case, you can build right up to the front door if you don't have additional rules around the zoning. Say, like, certain types of industrial uses can't be within half a mile of residential zoning, right? Something to that effect. You need that kind of nuance. Otherwise, we know how capitalism works. We know how development works in an area where there's not a lot of space to build housing. We will eventually end up building houses up to the front door of a trash transfer station and then letting the market decide, quote unquote, who is going to end up living there unless we create rules to prevent that sort of thing. So I think that that is the best mechanism we have available to us because otherwise, even if we were to move it, We're just going to end up seeing the same story somewhere else, whether it's five years from now, ten years from now, or tomorrow, depending on how close we put it to current houses.

So your first step would be to begin to reimagine the zoning and beginning to amend the zoning laws?

I think, for me, yes.

Have you looked at what reimagining or rezoning this area would look like?

I have not personally, but it's something that someone like myself could could definitely take part in. Right. So whether that's me or a colleague, you know, who has an expertize in urban planning and how to really think about those things. Yeah, I think it's a real possibility. Are you ready to begin work on doing some zoning amendments? I would be happy to be part of that conversation. And in fact, I don't know if Renee mentioned this. But he's working with one of my colleagues at the law school at Northeastern on a course this semester where the students are actually using the semester to dig into different models for zoning amendments and such.

I think he mentioned it.

Rene mentioned it. OK. So I missed it. But yes, that's happening.

So you're ready to work with Rene in that class?

Absolutely. OK. Yeah. I think I'm actually giving a guest lecture in a week and a half. Great.

Where?

At Northeastern in the law school.

What day is that class?

I think it's Thursday afternoons. You should come join me. We can do a joint show.

I'm trying to get it. What time is it?

I'll shoot you an email. I don't know precisely what time.

Send me an email and let me know.

I want to come see you.

I also think that if something's really going to happen, it needs to be intentional. It needs to get started as soon as possible. Because you know how long that's going to take. You know the kind of challenges it's going to take. So I would say let's get started as soon as possible. Bradford is here, my legislative director. Bradford, this is Professor O'Brien. And if we're gonna really move something, let's start moving it now so we can, because I know what it's like living over there. And it's horrendous. And so if it means moving the zoning, then we should begin working on that as soon as possible. and look at some of the other challenges that Republic is dealing with now. Thank you, Professor O'Brien. Tristan, I had a question for you, too. So, Tristan, how does ACE define environmental justice, and how did that definition apply To the concentration of these waste facilities, and thank you for the question.

I'll bring it back to civil rights. Environmental justice is the modern is one of the modern branches of the civil rights movement. And what that is is equal and fair and equitable treatment before the law. And so when we think about. 97th or 98th percentile for nitrogen dioxide exposure. That's environmental justice. I'll also add the layer that it's not just about the physical environment. It's also about processes and power. So environmental justice is about people having a seat at the table, those who are most affected by the issues actually having a voice in the processes. And so, yeah, I hope that answers your question.

What does ACE actually stand for?

alternatives for community and environment. Great.

And so are you ready to go to work on this? Oh, we've been at work, and we're happy to keep it going, and let's accelerate it. And you've already got some research done?

So we haven't done research ourselves. We're grateful for Professor O'Brien for his research. Just to give context on how East got involved, Marcos came to us through our Environmental Justice Assistance Network, which Denise helps manage, so people who are facing challenges come to us for help, and then we'll connect them with lawyers, scientific experts, and organizers. And so we've been engaged with DSNI through our EGEN program over the last year.

So you're working with Renee also? Yeah, we meet almost every week, every other week. Great, okay. Got the team together.

Last question, Counselor?

All right, I got to make it a good one since it's my last one. But I do appreciate all that you've done already, Tristan. So when you look at the concentration of these uses, how does that affect D&I's vision for the sustainable development without displacement? Did you get that?

Yeah, I got the question. I heard DNI, so I didn't want to... Did you say DNI? Yeah.

DSNI. DSNI. Could you repeat it? I'm sorry.

I think the question was, how does the facilities affect DSNI's vision for equitable development and the vision for the neighborhood?

Or sustainable development without displacement.

Yeah, but we wouldn't be displacing residents. So the question for us, when people came to us, it was about, this is impacting our ability to live here, right? So actually, the continuation of that will impact their ability to stay there or wanting to stay in that area. So we're about development. We want to have a certain kind of development and work with folks around development. But it's not a sense of, like, development means we'll keep this trash transfer station that we can probably build all these houses around, maybe, because if we're just doing it based on the market, that's what will happen. Those people won't be able to stay there. That's displacement. We won't be able to develop anything else there if no kinds of businesses would want to come there.

That's the kind of displacement I'm talking about.

Right. So that's why we're saying, that's why our staff, the residents, everyone is saying, we basically have to get rid of this. Because if it stays there, then it creates displacement.

Displacement. Yes. Okay, great. Okay. Thank you. Look, I submit my questions.

Thank you, Councillor. The chair recognizes Councillor Murphy. Councillor, you have the floor.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councillor Culpepper, for filing this and advocating. for your neighborhood and as an at-large city councilor, I represent all of you also, so thank you for your presentations also, and Chair, thank you for letting the public testimony go before us, because I learned a lot also from those who are living right there next to it. Lots of things came to mind. My first year here on the council, back in 2020, I was in Clifford Park doing a cleanup, and you know quickly realize you know that the mason pool had been closed for several summers that you've had that smell you see the negative impact that the residents have that is unlike any other residential neighborhood across the city with the you know recovery issues and the mass and cast issues so the strain in that small little area is you know it's not proportionate to other neighborhoods. And I see that when I'm all around, even in the neighborhood I'm in, in Mattapan. And then maybe the next year, Pat Brophy, Linda Josina Fori with Suffolk Construction, myself, I think John and a few others were there and did a walkthrough because they, as I think, you could tell me differently, but I think Suffolk Construction is a good neighbor and they try hard to, you know, do right by the neighborhood, not just for themselves, but they see themselves as someone who needs to give back, not just take from that neighborhood. And when we walked around, I saw all the Cambridge trucks and learned that all of the Cambridge trash gets dumped in Roxbury. Why? So I would say, too, it made me think all of the Cambridge city councilors should be here also advocating and supporting with us. So I think it's important that I reach out to them also to see how can they help us in this. How can we grow this network here? And at the ribbon cuttings and excited to see the new middle school and high school open, but we shouldn't just clean up because a fancy new high school comes. We should have been cleaning up because of the neighbors who have been there for generations. So it's important that we band together and then my next thought was I think all of us who were here in this room were there and myself for several days when the Teamsters were striking blocking the street and fighting for what I would show back up for for our workers but we should be doing the same thing for our residents so I think it's important for myself to just that mind shift like if we do it for organized labor and they're organized right it's in their name they're good at getting people out We need to, or I need to, I should say, show up more for, you know, you are organized and you do a great job, but we just see that it's not always equal, it's often not. So it's important to see it through that same lens, like when we show up for some but not others, and it's important to care about that. So I have a question. We could say, but we already know they're not a great neighbor. How do we make them be a better neighbor? But what are they doing that's illegal? So you must already have long lists and two columns. They could do this better. How do we stop? And are there oftentimes what I find is most of the things we fight for or people bring to us here are things that we already have rules and ordinance and laws. We're just not enforcing them. So are they breaking ordinances or things that we need to just enforce? Or are we allowing 24-hour dumping, like pulling up and dumping all hours? So if you could kind of... Clear that up a little.

I'm happy to start us off. So to Senator Miranda's letter, we've heard directly from the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, despite the stories that we've shared with them, that those facilities are considered to be under compliance. We've also been in direct communication with the Boston Public Health Commission, who pretty much said, we can't do anything unless you have hard legal evidence of violations. I think to the point that an earlier testifier made Even if they were living up to really high quality standards, there's still the quality of life issues that come from a trash facility in the neighborhood. I'll add also that Senator Miranda has been leading on advocacy and language in the statehouse. $500,000 in the environmental bond bill to do an environmental study around those facilities. So we can actually get that full accounting of what the issues are. potentially identify illegal violations and then also a provision that would strengthen the Department of Environmental Protection's authority to do warrantless inspections on these facilities because you're getting a heads up that you're going to be inspected you'll be able to you know get things in order I want to thank council for sure for signing on to a letter amplifying those asks and there are other transfer stations we could

compare that are in a residential neighborhood like that? I mean, like you said, we have schools, we have hospitals, we have the Public Health Commission, we have EMS, we have all of these, not just city, but Goodwill. There's so many large corporations and city departments right in that neighborhood. So are there others around? Do we know that? Or is that one kind of unique where houses, like when you said, there's nothing better? This morning was a nice, cool morning to sit out on your deck with a cup of coffee. To not be able to do that in your own home is, to me, it's heartbreaking. So I'd have to do some more research on that. We can compare to say, well, this is a different situation because we have all of these different populations so close by. Maybe that help advocate more.

You know one thing, thank you for asking your question, one thing DSMI met with about a year ago with the folks that suffered construction, Pat Brophy and they, and one thing they talked about that was while it may not be that they're breaking the law, what was pretty substantive was they mentioned to us that they have this long line of trucks that are running and there's an emissions issue. And so folks are impacted by that. So I think there's, yes, and people going to school and, you know, it smells bad, but then there's also, you know, this emission issue that happens.

Well, thank you. I know I've run out of time, but I'll continue to work alongside all of you. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councillor. The Chair recognizes Councillor Fitzgerald. Councillor, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Chair. And again, thank you for everyone's testimony and for all of you being here today. A bunch of the notes that I wrote down as you were all talking, some are duplicative at this point, but I still feel the need to bring some up. But one simple question, I'm not sure, maybe you guys do. How long has each of these transfer stations been there? Do we know?

Like for how, I don't know. Decades. I think one of them's been there for at least 40 years. Okay. I'm not sure about the other.

Okay. Thank you. That's just something I didn't know. I didn't know if you guys knew. Um, I was going to ask about, I know, uh, Vickiana brought up the, the, uh, I believe she brought up the health of the, uh, the workers at the trash transfer stations, uh, and what protections are they provided? And I only bring that up to say that could bolster the argument of saying, well, look, if the person working with the trash has to wear a hazmat suit what do you think the people that live on the other side of the wall should be wearing right and I don't know what those you know parameters are but I think we should look into it and I know with the strike recently that a lot of us were at we heard a lot of concerns around that One thing I do remember hearing, I don't know if this is speaking to Councillor Murphy's point of what they might do, what are they doing that might be breaking or not breaking the law. But I thought there were certain hours where the doors that they have to the trash have to be closed and they leave them open. And that is what is actually the waft of the smell going into the community with the particles and everything else going on. And I believe that's something that, I don't know if we can get evidence on, but that they were cited for, but I don't know what became of the follow up with the EPA and others about whether that is within the allowed use or not. But I know that that was one issue with it. I think that the workers mentioned that they were violating. I wrote down, I know we do take trash from other communities like Cambridge in there. Do we collect a fee at all? And I asked this of my colleagues as well if they know. Do we collect a fee for collecting another city or town's trash and bringing it into our city? Because it sounds like we, you know, if we're doing a favor, it sounds like we should be getting compensated for taking trash from another town. And if so, what can we use some of that for? That should be a funding stream that supports the environment. For DSMI. Nice plug there. But to support mitigating some of these environmental impacts, right? It's funny, I've been... Putting through, you know, I'm aligned on the rezoning of Newmarket. I think there is a moment that is coming up where there is a rebirth or a renewal of Newmarket. A lot of the uses there are dying, some of the shipping industries. I've talked with the folks there in my district talking about, John, the kids don't want to take it over. Amazon pretty much smoked us, you know, and we have these things here. So, okay, I'm thinking what is the next iteration of Newmarket? And so I think along with Councillor Culpepper and others here, I think really looking at the rezoning and what the next use of that area can be. Knowing industrial is still important and it's an important sector to have, but how can we incorporate that into more maybe an environmental friendly and what is the next sector of jobs, income, real estate taxes that we can bring into there? Lastly, Professor O'Brien, what do we track if it's not particulate matter? I know you said you would not want to track particulate matter. What is it that we would want to track?

It's a real good question. I think we would most specifically want to track volatile organic compounds. The VOCs. Yeah, the ones that smell bad, basically. And when you do that, if you... So I have a colleague who actually has a van that has all the technology in it to not only track VOCs in general, but to categorize them. So he then classifies them in a variety of different forms. So that's the kind of thing you'd want to look at. And then you'd actually be able to see... not just like VOCs as an umbrella group, but like, oh, we're getting some of this type and some of that type, and this type's more dangerous than this one, and you know, that sort of thing. That's what you want to go after. Okay, good to know.

And lastly, I'm thinking about, and I ask this is all because there's another issue in Newmarket, substance abuse that is down there, where there's a congregation of services and the services, while helpful, have brought a lot of other impacts to the neighbourhood. And so I liken it to this issue because it's the same one I ask myself when I think about where do we put these services when people say they're impacting. So it also, there's a lot dumped into Roxbury, Dorchester South end, right? When you talk about all these from, from not just the trash, but also the services around addiction, et cetera, they're, they're a hard sell, right? To move to anywhere else. What are you guys thinking about in terms of what you said? The number one thing, and I don't disagree at all. It is to remove that right from the neighborhood, from a residential community. We're trying to raise families, put a school, put open space, But do we have any solution? Have you guys thought of anything? And I only ask that, you know, because I know it is when we do this listening session, I mean, the thing we want to come out of this is we have a proposed solution, right? That's the best way to advocate. And I don't know if you guys have put any thought into that or is that something that we need to sort of get behind?

I want to speak to that because, you know, I am a believer that small things matter. And I appreciated the professor talking about buffer zones. My property abuts a commercial property. They're part of the new market district. And that owner said they could do all sorts of things there because they were in that district. And so I think the idea of creating those buffers is one thing. I don't drive through there anymore, through the area, Girard Street. But when I did, I would think about the lack of trees, that nice wall, but with dimly lit spaces. And then that pothole sort of covered street down to Massa or . So I think that... From my perspective, people reject some of these spaces because the experience is that when issues arise, it's nobody's job. It's not just about relocating things, but making sure that the impact is not going to be huge. I stopped walking down Mass Ave. I actually called 911 one time because I was going to get jumped coming home. Again, luckily the police arrived on time, probably because they knew the area was hot. But yeah, I think the lack of response from those that have the responsibility to serve us, that is the reason why nobody wants these type of situations in their backyards.

Agreed. Can I just add one thing? And this isn't a solution specifically, but at least a pathway to one. Because you make an apt point, right? The trash transfer station and then the services for the kinds of needs that are concentrated in that area. But there is a distinction in the sense that the latter has to be near people because the people who need it need to be able to get there, right? They need to be able to access it. A trash transfer station does not need to be near people, right? The people who need to access it are the ones who are driving the garbage trucks. They can get there, right? So there is a distinction there where I don't think you have to try as hard to figure out who you're selling the thing to if you can find spaces that are a little bit less, you know, alongside people and families and homes.

I think we would love to work collaboratively with these trash facility owners to figure out where they might be able to divert and eventually completely send their trash. I'm not going to go out and find land parcels on their behalf, but I will certainly advocate and work with Cambridge City Council, Boston City Council, and other partners to try to make something happen.

Great. Well, I know that's my time. Thank you very much, Chair. And again, thank you to all those who testified and on a panel. Thank you.

Thank you. The chair recognizes Councillor Flynn.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And before I begin, I want to say thank you to Councillor Culpepper for bringing this forward. And to you, Mr. Chair, I think this is one of the most informative hearings we've had all year. Listen closely to the panel testify. Listen closely to the residents as well. Marcos, I listened to you when you spoke, your opening statement, and I could tell you your heart was breaking. You just had so many quality of life issues impacting your neighbors. And it's terribly, terribly unfair what's happening. I listened to John, I listened to the professor and Tristan. Tristan, one thing that caught my attention, you said in your opening statement, there hasn't been an environmental study about this situation. Can you explain that?

The state has the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act, and there's been a number of changes that ACE and our allies have fought for across the years to make it so that if you are within an environmental justice community that you have to do certain levels of environmental study. It's my understanding that those changes kicked into effect after these facilities had already received their relevant state permits. And so there has to date not been a Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act environmental review, and I have not been able to discover any substantial city of Boston or other agency environmental reviews of these facilities.

Okay, and I'll only speak about the city of Boston public health, but I wouldn't accept that from the public health department that they're not able to do a public health, they're not able to do an environmental study. I'd never accept that. as an answer. If this was in a wealthy community in Boston, there'd be an environmental study done. I don't know how we get that done, but you probably have the best district city council advocating for you in Council of Culpeper. But I think it's critically needed. I don't like to say this often, but I was stationed overseas. We used to breathe in the fumes in the Middle East. I'm part of something called a registry. It's more of a public health registry or a medical registry. The medical condition or the medical challenges residents must have, especially as it relates to respiratory issues, asthma, you guys highlighted it. Cancer, I bet you, is a significant problem. That's why I'm advocating for a public health environmental study response. And John, I know the incredible work you have done, your leadership. But do we know, even though there hasn't been a study, do we know about the health of the residents in the area?

We do through our association with BMC. So, in fact, we have one of their doctors who's on our board, and she's talked about some of those impacts. We can get you studies on that. That one we know for sure, how it's impacted health.

Okay. I remember they used to call... They used to call the people that were serving in the Middle East, like myself, they used to call it Gulf War syndrome, as if the medical issues you had weren't real. And that's why I can relate to what you're going through, because you're fighting for your family. You're fighting for your kids. You're fighting for your neighbors. You have to provide them the best and the healthiest neighborhood to live in and That's not that's not the case. It's it's it's not a it's not a healthy neighborhood As you all highlighted So, let me let me just ask Marcos and Listening to you Marcos you you highlighted a bunch of challenges in your opening statement and

um about about what's happening in the quality of life environmental but how do you how do you move forward on this issue well i think it starts with uh building the right team to you know um have folks that should be accountable and uh those allies a part of that team i know that as a board member of dsni and dni we talked about you know how do we take care of of the um of the village of the you know land trust and beyond um because again i've experienced that i can have a home that i love but when i walk outside it's a different story right uh so i think it's it is uh getting back to making sure that the little things are getting done right that we are getting what we deserve and i know that we deserve a lot more well

Thank you to the panel. Thank you to the residents that testified. Thank you to Councillor Culpepper, Councillor Worrell, and Councillor Fitzgerald for their strong advocacy. I'm actually just down the way. I live down towards Andrew Square, Andrew Station, which is not too far from where you're talking about, somewhat down the road. But whatever I can do to be helpful, I'm all in. And I'll follow up with my council colleagues. Thank you.

Thank you. Chair recognizes Councilor Louis-Jen. Councilor, the floor is yours.

Thank you. And I want to thank all of you for your testimony. DSNI has always been the example of what it looks like to have residents lead and show the way and tell us. And today is that example. So I want to thank you, Marcos, and everyone who testified. When I'm reading the docket and I'm looking at the looking at the exchange between the Mass Department of Environmental Protection and Senator Miranda's office, it seems like there's a disconnect. And there's a disconnect in the DEP really understanding this as an EJ issue, or maybe receiving sufficient complaints to really understand that it's an issue. So as much as a community listening session is going to be great, has there been a way to call MassDEP into the community directly to hear from residents so that they can take this issue more seriously.

I think that's definitely something we want to follow up on. We've been in conversation with MassDEP and their EJ office about this issue. And I think it totally makes sense to invite them to hear directly from residents as well. We've been doing door knocking, community surveying. We have an online forum. We've encouraged people to submit what they've experienced. And I believe some of those will actually be shared with you on the council.

Thank you. Yeah, because there are letters. I mean, it seems like we received two complaints in 2023, and it's like, well, but people have been complaining about this for years. And so if the metric that you're using is just, if they need letters, is there a campaign to make sure that they know it, unless there's a way to drag them, make sure that they come to community to hear about it? So just something that I wanted to make sure to uplift. Do we know how many trash transfer stations there are in the city of Boston where they're located?

This has to be double-checked, but I believe those are actually the only two active ones.

The one on Norfolk and on Girard, right? And you said the one on Norfolk has been there for, what, 40 years? And the one on Girard? I don't know off the top of my head. We can follow up. So the legislation would essentially be the zoning amendment that would create a non-industrial use of a purely industrial zoning, purely residential zoning that would not grandfather in pre-existing uses to prevent this from happening. So that's the work that has to happen, it sounds like. I had the pleasure of being on the call when DSNI had this announcement about the 75 new sensors that are tracking air, heat, and noise. And it seems like when one of the fires happened, it was also a sensor that identified that the fire was happening. What is the difference between the sensor that identified that there was a fire happening and the sensor that that the common sense uh celebration that celebrated the 75 sensors

Yeah, so that's a great question. I mean, there are dozens of different types of sensors, and they all are actually really precise in what they're able to observe. So the sensor that identified the fire, I'm going to guess it's probably like a glorified smoke alarm, which essentially just figures out that there's enough particulate matter in the air that you're above a threshold, that there's an alert that needs to be sent out, which is a little bit different from ours, which are quantifying how much particulate matter of a certain size is in the air, which would be different from an ozone sensor, which is like it has something in it that reacts specifically to ozone and can then tell you how much ozone is in the air, so on and so forth. So each of these pieces of technology has to be different from each other in order to get the very specific thing you're trying to track.

And these 74, you said 51 heat and noise and 23 air quality, but none of these are located near the trash transfer sites.

There are two that are near-ish. One that's right near the school. Mason, the Mason. Yeah, that everyone's been talking about. So one right outside the Mason's, I think the playground, the rec area outside. That's the closest we got.

And why is that? Why not one closer to the trash transfer station? Especially since this is such a big issue that we're trying to sort of accumulate and get as much data as possible to support the idea that these are harmful and creating all these environmental justice issues.

Yeah, that's a really good question. If I'm being 100% frank, there were conversations about doing that among the team and there were There have been historical situations where academic community partnerships did something like that intentionally without the backing of, say, legislators or the administration. And cease and desist letters were sent as a result by the trash transfer stations. And we decided that was too risky to kind of put the whole project at risk of having this as an extra piece where we would go after this. and risk everything else we had built together.

Would you need to locate them inside the trash transfer station?

No. No, they need to be located strategically around the perimeter, so the streets that surround the trash transfer station.

So what would be the legal basis of a claim by the trash transfer station against you if it's not on their property?

I'm not sure that they would have a lot of one, but if they have more money for lawyers than we do.

Yeah. And so where are they physically located right now?

There are two that are nearby. There's one that's right next to the Mason and there's one that's about a block and a half up over to the side. So they can capture certain kinds of information around it. I believe one is air quality, and the other one is heat and noise. So the heat and noise one could potentially capture the impact in that localized area of the trucks coming through. And the air quality one, I believe, is the one next to the Mason. And so that could capture the extent to which the Mason is experiencing consistent impacts.

And what are they? I mean, you've had them for months now at this point. What is the data showing you? Is it confirming what you already understood? Is it providing additional information that could be helpful in making the general argument about environmental justice, environmental racism in the area as a result of not only trash, it's not just the trash. It's like a number of other compounding things that are creating these conditions. Absolutely. What are you, what have you gleaned so far from the data that from the 75 sensors, 74 it sounds like from.

We are actually, because you need months of data to do anything. So we actually have just finished over the course of the summer developing a formal protocol for processing all the data. We actually published it yesterday. So people have been able to access it in real time on a map. In the meantime, but yesterday was actually the first time it was available in large spreadsheets that someone could do aggregate analysis on. And in fact, my course this semester, I teach a course called Big Data for Cities. We are going to have the students dig into these data and really start getting at some of those questions that you're talking about and being able to answer them because we wanted enough months to be able to say something conclusive. So yeah, we're jumping right into that in this moment.

Thank you. Mister, can I ask one more question? So you alluded to the DSNI's past Don't Dump on Me campaign, which has helped lead to all of the land reclamation. What are the lessons from that that you're looking to implement here?

Don't dump on us is what created the land trust. We were able to create housing out of that. I think that if we have land, more land available, we can create more park space.

Is it also looking at land reclamation in the same way?

Looking at land reclamation in very much the same way. I think for us, the question is, what else can we, working with the city, can we develop around that area? Our residents are asking for many things, but one of the things is it could be turned into a park. It could be turned into something. We're thinking land reclamation and also putting it under community control as the rest of the land trust is. That's the big lesson we learned, that residents would want to create something. Having a resident-led process to create whatever we see is the best use of that land.

Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to go back to Councillor Culpepper.

Just one quick comment. We did already file a zoning amendment. It's already filed. We need to talk to... Council Durkin it's in our committee. You might want to talk to her too But we'll talk to her to see how Soon we can move that zoning amendment because I think it's going to take some time the earlier as soon as we Begin working on it the quicker we can get to some some goals. The other thing is that a Republic was founded even in late 1977 or it may have been December of 1976. Mr. Chairman, thank you for giving me the time that you have. Thank you. Thank you, all of you. This is amazing because if you remember when I first met you, I was just a little old country preacher. But I did say when I won, we were going to get started on this. and we're right where we said we wanted to be. So let's keep running and not stop. Thank you.

Thank you all very much.

Yes, and I want to thank my colleagues, also Councilor Culpepper, the advocates, the panelists, everyone who lent their voices, conversation, and please continue to use this committee, whether it's for listening sessions, happy to host a working session where we could dive into the creation of the language. So let's continue to work together to move this work forward. And with that said, the hearing on docket number 1241 is adjourned.

you Thank you.