There is a very real possibility that the multipurpose machine gun range (MPMGR) will proceed, regardless of the EPA finding that it will contaminate the Upper Cape Water Supply Reserve.
That is the inescapable conclusion that we have come to after reviewing documents turned over to APCC, after much delay, by the Massachusetts National Guard. (See the documents here.) The records, which were not turned over to APCC until the Secretary of State ordered the Guard to comply with state law, contained several major revelations:
- The Guard rejects the authority of the EPA to conduct its review under the Safe Drinking Water Act. This is different than their previous stance that the EPA’s findings were incorrect. The Guard has changed how the project is being contracted to take advantage of a nuance in federal law that would exempt the project from EPA review.
- The Guard has aggressively, as we expected, pursued approval from the congressional appropriations committees, to add more money to the project budget so that they can cover the inflated cost overruns without a publicly recorded act of Congress.
- The Guard has selected a contractor to build the MPMGR using 2018 specifications that fail to take into account any of the groundwater contamination concerns, despite leading the public to think that it was open to mitigations.
- The Guard has great urgency to sign a contract to build the MPMGR on or before September 30, 2024 when their money disappears.
Taken together, the revelations clearly show that any public reliance that the federal government would rely on the EPA findings to prevent further contamination of the groundwater were misplaced. It is further worth worrying about the Guard’s commitment to comply with state law requirements that the Environmental Management Commission’s (EMC) must first make a determination that training not be incompatible with protection of the water supply. Real questions have to be asked if the EMC will intervene and exercise its statutory obligation to protect the water supply of the Upper Cape from even more contamination than already exists at JBCC.
The last time we raised this issue many of you asked what you can do. This time we encourage you to contact the three EMC commissioners and demand that they intervene and initiate a full public review and determination of the impact of the MPMGR on the drinking water supply, that they just not rely on the Guard’s self-serving internal environmental assessment, but that they give full weight to the EPA findings and the concerns of the public.
APCC has already reached out to the EMC, but we need you to amplify the message.
