Activists urge Healey to quash Hanscom airfield expansion
Photo | Courtesy of Sam Drysdale, State House News Service
Daniel Emerson, a descendant of Ralph Waldo Emerson [left] and Mark Thoreau, a family descendant of Henry David Thoreau [right], sit next to each other in the Senate Reading Room on Tuesday. Both are involved in efforts to stop the expansion of Hanscom.
The Healey administration last year rejected a draft environmental impact report to expand the largest private jet airfield in New England, and activists now want the governor to wield her power to completely halt the project.
Climate conservation and historic preservation groups delivered a letter and petition to Healey's office on Tuesday, with the support of lawmakers who represent the area near the Lawrence G. Hanscom Field nestled between Bedford, Lincoln, Lexington and Concord.
The letter says the proposed expansion "stands to pose irreparable harm to one of the most historically and ecologically significant areas in our country."
The Concord Minute Men and descendants of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, 19th century writers who are considered "naturalists" and lived in the area where the airfield is now, joined the activists to deliver a petition from the National Trust for Historic Preservation with over 4,300 signatures. The National Trust for Historic Preservation listed Minute Man National Historic Park and Walden Pond on their list of 11 most endangered historic places last year, due to the possible expansion.
A separate petition by the Stop Private Jet Expansion at Hanscom or Anywhere group has reached over 14,000 signatures.
"It's often said that Henry David Thoreau was prophetic in his writing regarding many societal challenges," Mark Thoreau said during a press conference Tuesday. "I believe he left his prescient words behind in 1862 to provide for us a warning and a call to action: 'Most men, it seems to me, do not care for nature and would sell their share in all her beauty as long as they may live for a stated sum. Thank God men cannot, as yet, fly and lay waste to the sky as well as the Earth.'"
The Massachusetts Port Authority, a quasi-public agency, has proposed adding 27 hangars at Hanscom Field, raising concerns about increased carbon emissions from private jets that critics say only serve the wealthy.
According to the Stop Private Jet Expansion at Hanscom or Anywhere coalition, the airfield development would add nearly 500,000 square feet of hangar space for the 27 private jet hangars on 49 acres. The changes could add a potential of 81 private jets to the airfield, with two to three planes per hangar, which would triple Hanscom's private jet capacity, the coalition said.
Last year, developers Runway Realty Ventures and North Airfield Ventures filed an environmental impact report for review from the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) Office. That report included the agency's estimates on public health impact and fossil fuel emissions. Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Rebecca Tepper found that the impact report "does not adequately and properly comply with MEPA and its implementing regulations."
The developers' plan asserted that the expansion of the airfield would have a net greenhouse gas benefit, based on an assumption that the project is not built.
"Given the Proponent’s statements about existing constraints in hangar capacity, and as stated in multiple comment letters, it is also unclear why a future 'No Build' condition would reflect full absorption of projected demand, as the need for additional hangar capacity is the very reason the project is being proposed. The desire to spur and attract new business to maximize profitability is the primary incentive for any private business enterprise, and I see no reason why this project would be unique in this regard," the letter from Tepper, from June 2024, says.
She also pointed out that the developers' estimates contradict an independent analysis done by Industrial Economic, Inc., which concluded that the project would result in an increase in greenhouse gas emissions by 133,000 to 161,000 metric tons per year.
Last June's rejection directed developers to prepare an additional report, which is anticipated this year.
Though her administration blocked the project from moving forward last year, Healey has not outright opposed the expansion. Asked for a response to the petitioners on Tuesday, a spokesperson for Healey said they would continue to monitor the MEPA review.
Activists said the rejection of the MEPA review gave them hope the administration would eventually oppose it.
"We have a real opportunity to stop this," said Sen. Michael Barrett of Lexington. "Today we're going to call on the governor of Massachusetts to use all the powers of her office, her considerable moral authority, her political leverage, to persuade Massport to do the right thing. We have a genuine chance, I think, of ultimately prevailing on this issue. Nothing is guaranteed, and the odds remain very difficult, but they aren't as long as they were in early 2023."
The landscape has also changed in the wake of a 2024 law requiring Massport to rewrite its charter to prioritize reducing emissions, Rep. Simon Cataldo said.
The revised charter requires the agency to promote "environmental protection and resilience, reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and environmental justice principles" in all its decision-making.
"As leaders of the commonwealth, you are being asked to write a new story, a story in which the richest people in the world are denied permission to ruin the most renowned, and I might say, sacred natural wonders in the commonwealth, all so that the elite one percenters may gain a tiny increment of personal convenience," said Rev. Jim Antal, a longtime climate activist.
Massport declined to comment for this story.
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