WENDELL — Proposed legislation drafted by a local grassroots organization to create a “People’s Forest Bill of Rights” has stalled, at least for now, after being reported out for study by the Joint Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture earlier this month.
The Wendell State Forest Alliance authored the bill in response to Franklin County Superior Court Judge Richard Carey’s dismissal of a lawsuit 29 members filed alleging several state laws and regulations were broken with the logging of 100-year-old oak trees on an 80-acre stand in Wendell State Forest in the summer of 2019.
The bill was presented by state Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa, D-Northampton, by request, and was later sponsored by state Rep. Natalie Blais, D-Sunderland, and state Sens. Jo Comerford, D-Northampton, and Adam Hinds, D-Pittsfield. It will go nowhere this session and reintroduction must wait until the next legislative session next year.
Gia Neswald, a member of the Wendell State Forest Alliance and co-plaintiff in the case, explained she was told the bill, aimed at giving residents more of a say on tree harvesting on public land, was destined for this fate because it had no legislative sponsors when it was originally filed last year. She credited this to alliance members’ lack of expertise in drafting legislation, but added she is frustrated by what she views as problems within the system.
“Speaking for myself, I would say that I am deeply troubled by the state of our government,” she said Monday. “It’s becoming increasingly apparent that the (legislative system) has lots of broken parts.”
Alliance member Laurel Facey said she was disappointed but unsurprised to learn what had happened to the bill.
“It will be revived under a different bill, I suppose, under the next Legislature,” Facey said.
She mentioned she and her colleagues were forewarned that bills of this variety often need many co-sponsors to move forward.
“We’re newbies at this. It’s not like we’ve done anything like this before in our lives, and it’s a learning process,” she said. “We need to keep our forests intact.”
While waiting until the bill can be refiled, the Wendell State Forest Alliance plans to continue gathering support from legislators and constituents throughout the year.
The bill, which will be assigned a new legislative number if it is refiled, can be read at bit.ly/33EiFfD. If a version of it is passed into law, commercial tree harvesting and associated activities on state-owned land would be considered a significant “greenhouse gas emissions source” and be subject to relevant Global Warming Solutions Act requirements.
In addition to other provisions, Massachusetts residents would have the right “to participate in every stage of the planning for all commercial tree harvesting projects on commonwealth-owned lands,” and public comments on proposed projects would have to be substantially incorporated.
According to the alliance, the People’s Forest Bill of Rights is intended to hold state land management agencies accountable to existing laws and to empower the public with the right to intervene regarding public land use plans and decisions. The Wendell State Forest Alliance offers further information at wendellforest.org/take-action.
In mid-September 2020, plaintiffs and defendants in the Wendell State Forest Alliance’s lawsuit over the state forest logging delivered statements pertaining to the state’s motion to dismiss and the judge took it under advisement before ultimately dismissing the case in November. The other defendants were Kathleen Theoharides, secretary of the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs; Department of Conservation and Recreation Commissioner Leonard Roy; and William Hill, director of the state’s Public Lands/Management Forestry Program. The logging of the oak trees on the 80-acre stand was completed in 2019.
The co-plaintiffs have argued the logging exacerbated climate change’s effects and that a lack of any meaningful due process for citizens to appeal decisions regarding public forests made it unjustly difficult to challenge the work, which alliance members insist was illegal.
Attempts to contact various state legislators were unsuccessful on Monday.
Reach Domenic Poli at dpoli@recorder.com or 413-772-0261, ext. 262.