It is well documented that the Massachusetts National Guard has taken issue with the EPA’s ability to conduct a sole source aquifer review of the proposed multipurpose machine gun range (MPMGR). The Guard complained when EPA announced its intention to undertake the review, it complained about the substantive result of the review, it has challenged the EPA’s jurisdiction to conduct the review, and it has gone so far as to shift responsibility for building it to the Army in an attempt eliminate EPA’s jurisdiction. The Guard’s position on the EPA has been clear and consistent, at least in public that is.
An email, turned over to APCC in response to a public records request, tells a very different story. In the email from the Guard to EPA, the GUARD INVITES AND REQUESTS EPA TO UNDERTAKE A REVIEW OF THE PROJECT UNDER THE SOLE SOURCE PROVISIONS OF THE SAFE DRINKING WATER ACT.
Yep, that’s right, the Guard asked EPA to do the review that they now claim is beyond EPA’s authority. One would be justified in wondering, what changed? Could it be that the Guard thought EPA was in the tank and would simply bless the inadequate review that the Guard produced and then changed their minds when EPA made it clear that they were going to do their job and undertake the real review they ultimately did? Could it be that the Guard knew that a serious review would shine an unfavorable light on the project, so they went from asking for EPA review to doing everything possible to kill such a review? These are interesting and plausible questions, the answers to which we may never know because no one is talking and most of our public record requests are either slow walked or ignored altogether.
The Guard’s email has it right in stating that there would be value in the EPA review. They have it backward in stating that the governing state law prioritizes training over protection of the Upper Cape Water Supply Reserve, and therein lies the problem. The Guard either doesn’t understand or chooses to mischaracterize the choices the Commonwealth codified into law when it elected to allow the base to remain a tenant under conditions intended to avoid a repeat of the activities that contaminated water supplies and have cost $1.2 billion and counting in public funds to clean it all up.
Having been invited in to do the work, EPA should finish the job and finalize its well-framed assessment that the project is a threat to the continued purity of the region’s largest source of drinking water.
