E-Mail This Article to a Friend Green wake-up call (continued)
	Related links Environmental League of Massachusetts Visit the site of this legislative watchdog and advocacy organization to learn more about state environmental spending — or the lack thereof. Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation Gain a better understanding of the state’s natural resources by visiting one (or more) of the the state’s parks, reservations, campgrounds, or beaches. At DCR’s Web site, you can find maps and information, make campground reservations, or learn how to work for the parks. Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection The state DEP site offers heaps of public-safety information about everything from water and air quality to recycling and mercury and lead pollution. Boston GreenSpace Alliance The Esplanade Association Charles River Watershed Association Friends of the Middlesex Fells Reservation Green Berkshires Trust for Public Land These organizations provide different services and geographical perspectives, but they are all dedicated to preserving environmental resources, and they all need volunteers.

From 1998 until July 2004, Deirdre Menoyo worked for that program, as the DEP’s assistant commissioner for the Bureau of Waste Site Cleanup. On her watch, DEP investigators once discovered contaminated groundwater near a shooting range, polluted by chemicals from bullets that landed in the range’s "drop zone." They temporarily moved people out of their homes, replaced almost three feet of soil, and fixed a potentially dangerous problem.

But Menoyo quit last summer, after continuous layoffs — the program lost more than 70 employees out of about 260 — changed the nature of an initiative she worked hard to build. "The program is not doing the types of things we ordinary citizens would like to think our government is doing to protect us," she says. Although Menoyo points out that with "some smart changes," employees "actually did figure out how to do more with less," streamlining can stretch too far. "We became a totally reactive program," she says, unable to seek out hazards, and able only to respond to them.

Conditions within the DCR, which has seen its budget cut by almost 40 percent since 2001, are just as bad, if not worse. Many of the 500,000 acres of reservations, parkland, forests, and open space across Massachusetts need significant maintenance.

With a $68 million budget in 2005, DCR has about $140 to spend per acre — not nearly enough, says Pam DiBona, who served as DCR’s deputy commissioner until February of this year. (DiBona’s departure came right after that of her boss, Katherine Abbott, whom Romney fired on February 4, 2005, purportedly for insufficient snow removal near West Roxbury High School that contributed to an accident involving four students.) The biggest problem, however, is understaffing.

"There was definitely a morale problem out in the field," she says, mostly because park rangers feel as if they are "the last of a dying breed." DiBona worries that without the money to keep and hire new employees, DCR will lose its base of people who know how to care for the nooks and crannies of Massachusetts’s green spaces. On top of that, on any given night, DiBona estimates that fully half the state’s campgrounds "might not have a DCR person on site." Rangers are also unable to effectively patrol for illegal dumping on public lands. Mike Ryan, executive director of the Friends of Middlesex Fells, a volunteer organization that raises money and awareness to protect the largest green space north of Boston, reports that he’s "never seen a ranger" at the very reservation he works to maintain.

The decline in day-to-day maintenance leads to larger — and more expensive — infrastructure needs. These are paid for with separate, state-allocated capital-improvement funds. But such large requests could be reduced if the operating budget allowed rangers to perform simple, smaller repairs and upkeep. "Parks need to be thought of as green infrastructure," says Patrice Todisco, executive director of the Esplanade Association, a nonprofit group dedicated to preserving the three-mile Charles River Esplanade. Letting them fall into disrepair, she says, "costs a lot more in the long run to bring them back."

DESPITE SUCH damning evidence, legislators and advocates say it is difficult to convince people that environmental spending should be a priority. The benefits of land-preservation or even pollution laws can seem intangible when compared with requests for local aid or education dollars. State Senator Pamela Resor and Representative Frank Smizik, who serve as co-chairs of the state’s Joint Committee on Environment, Natural Resources, and Agriculture, both say that fighting for environmental concerns can be an uphill battle. "Sometimes it’s hard to get environmental issues out in the forefront until something dramatic happens," Smizik says.

For environmental warriors, that battle is familiar. "The effects of inadequate budgets are not immediately seen or felt," DeVillars says. "The damage is incremental — it’s piece-by-piece, acre-by-acre.... Drinking-water supplies don’t go from being perfectly pure one day to being contaminated the next. It’s degradation over time."

In other words, environmental problems can seem less pressing in the short term. That’s why some advocates, tired of being at the bottom of the ladder, try to reframe the issue as a social one, more about public health than about hugging trees. DiBona calls it an "equity issue," because the people who go camping in Franklin State Park aren’t "the people who have a vacation house on the Cape."

There’s also an economic argument. "There are so many ways in which environmental issues intersect with Massachusetts’s economic interests," says former state environmental secretary Susan Tierney. State parks contribute to both quality of life (which is "important for attracting and maintaining [a highly educated] workforce") and tourism (one of the state’s biggest revenue streams). Not to mention the "health-care costs associated with environmental degradation" — Massachusetts has the eighth-highest asthma rate in the country, according to the state Department of Public Health. Perhaps with more money to enforce clean-air laws, the DEP could reduce this problem, which disproportionately affects low-income Bostonians.

Many experts suggest that the problem comes down to a lack of public awareness. To put it plainly, "we have to do a better job of communicating the risk without saying the sky is falling," says Anne Kelly, chair of the Environmental League’s lawyers’ committee. Here, public-private partnerships that include boots-on-the-ground civic participation could make a difference. However, says DeVillars, "only the government has the obligation and the responsibility to administer and enforce environmental laws."

Deirdre Fulton can be reached at dfulton[a]phx.com