In response to: “THE AIRPORT (Part Four): Atop a vital aquifer, the airport’s environmental compliance has been spotty. Who’s been watching?“
To the editor:
A special permit for the airport would help protect the community.
Once again, Bill Shein has produced another painfully long and skewed personal opinion piece and presented it as reporting—and the Edge has actively participated in this ruse. The future of the airport is far too important and the popular sentiment far too charged to let such an inflammatory and misleading piece go unanswered. (See, “THE AIRPORT (Part Four): Atop a vital aquifer, the airport’s environmental compliance has been spotty. Who’s been watching?”)
At first glance it may appear that those who support a special permit for the airport and those who oppose it are diametrically opposed. But in reality, among most citizens of Great Barrington, the differences are more subtle. One place that there is universal agreement is that protecting the water supply is paramount.
There is no one who voices disregard for this issue. The question turns on what “protection” means in a useful and practical way. There is risk in every human endeavor. Unlike so many things that happen in the overlay district, the risks associated with having an airport in that location are well documented, regulated, and inspected. Most activities that go on in the water protection zone are not. Every septic field, every application of pesticides or herbicides, and every car and lawn mower imposes risks to the town water supply. Their impact does show up in the town’s water quality reports from time to time. The biggest attributable impacts have been related to household septic systems and agricultural runoff in the form of increased nitrates and phosphates. Are we saying there should be no farming or housing in that zone? No. Has there ever been any kind of demonstrated contamination from the airport in the past 100 years? No. It is impossible for society to operate with no risks. The point is that we need to be as smart and alert as possible to the potential environmental risks we take—and not to pretend that one actor poses all of the risk. To be realistic, the tanker trucks that pass the airport on route 71 on a daily basis are far more risky than a new double walled, alarm monitoring, inspected, underground tank.
One thing that Mr. Shein does say (but obscures in the text) is that since inheriting the airport in 2004, the current owners have invested heavily in improving safety and meeting compliance. They have conducted the testing that proves no contamination. They have replaced the aging fuel tank with a modern double walled tank. They had engineered other safety improvements that were shot down by the opponents in the permitting process. And they continue to show commitment to do whatever it takes to mitigate the legitimate concerns of the town. This is the state of the current proposition.
I say obscured because, for every statement that affirms improvement, Mr. Shein will counter with past citations to cast doubt, no matter how old or out of context they may be. The “violations” are part of being a regulated activity. Anyone who has ever been pulled over for an expired inspection sticker has been cited as being in violation. The point is that the current owners have made major strides in improving water protection in spite of the handful of neighbors that do not support them.
To cast even more doubt, Mr. Shein tries to characterize the Selectboard as being unable to regulate the airport. Of course they are not! As Selectboard Chairman Steve Bannon points out, that job belongs to the state. All of the citations that Mr. Shein has pointed to have come from the appropriate agency. However, there is no reason why the Selectboard cannot demand that the airport provides documentation of compliance once a year as a condition of a special permit.
This brings me to the last point. I have noticed in listening and talking to folks who oppose a special permit for the airport that they by and large say they don’t want the airport to close. I find this bitterly ironic since the existence of the airport hinges on the town granting a permit in order to prevail in the Land Court case being pursued by a handful of neighbors. If folks want more control over the airport but want to see it continue, then a special permit is the way to achieve that. The current “grandfather status” is full of the vicissitudes and vagaries that have gotten us into this mess. A special permit would provide the Selectboard with the appropriate standing to add conditions, require future special permits for expansion, and give the airport a way to submit to conditions that are accountable and transparent.
It has been surprising to me how easy it has been to change the minds of some who have opposed a special permit once they understand what a special permit could do in this situation. There is a lot of misinformation going around—a lot of scare tactics employed. But at the end of the day, It is clear to me that the overwhelming majority of residents want to protect the airport while protecting the water and controlling growth. It is now the Selectboard’s daunting task to craft a special permit that satisfies those needs while allowing the airport to continue as the community gem that it is.
Dave Long
Great Barrington
Bill Shein responds:
Dave Long always has important things to say about local issues. But in his letter he misrepresents the information presented in “THE AIRPORT” reported-column series, which is co-published by The Berkshire Edge and The Berkshire Argus, and also makes several unsubstantiated claims.
First, the story he references in his letter presents detailed reporting about the Great Barrington Airport’s longstanding and significant lack of compliance with state environmental regulations. Those failures began under the airport’s prior ownership and continued substantially under the current owners at least until 2018. (As reported, it also received a Notice of Noncompliance for a UST-related violation in 2021.)
Long presents no evidence that “the current owners have invested heavily in improving safety and meeting compliance” before the state-mandated replacement of its underground storage tank (UST) in 2018. As detailed in the story, Berkshire Aviation Enterprises (BAE) did not initiate that project until two months after the state’s statutory deadline for replacement of single-walled USTs—a deadline announced by state regulators fully a decade earlier. It also did not begin to seek necessary local permits, including Planning Board approval, until nearly four months after the deadline.
Second, there is no evidence that BAE “engineered other safety improvements that were shot down by the opponents in the permitting process.” In fact, as reported in this installment, when seeking a special permit in 2017, BAE told the Selectboard that it planned to relocate its fuel storage to environmentally preferred above-ground storage tanks—as recommended by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation’s Aeronautics Division. After withdrawing its special-permit application, it soon abandoned those plans for reasons the owners told me and that were reported in the story.
Finally, nothing in this series makes a case for approving or denying a special permit, but rather, provides information that may be useful in the discussion. Whether to award a special permit, and what if any conditions to attach, is for the Great Barrington Selectboard to determine based on information submitted into the record during its ongoing hearings. That includes the important testimony of local residents like Long, who spoke quite movingly to the board on February 27 about the importance of emergency medical-transfer helicopter flights.
This series, based on nearly nine months of reporting, is an effort to add vital information to a contentious community conversation about an important issue. As described in part one of the series, that contentiousness has been fueled for decades in part by a lack of good information. It is unclear how providing that long-missing information is, as Long argues in his letter, “inflammatory.”
This ongoing project is also an effort to present fully the stories and points-of-view of those involved. That includes the airport’s owners, local pilots, concerned airport neighbors, and a host of experts who were interviewed for additional information and context. Readers should evaluate the facts, documents, and points-of-view presented in this series, reach their own conclusions, and contribute to a constructive dialogue.
