GOV. CHARLIE BAKER, a Republican, and Attorney General Maura Healey, a Democrat, are two of the most popular politicians in the state, so when they disagree they tend to tread very carefully.
The Baker administration, through secretary of energy and environmental affairs Matthew Beaton, is expected on Friday to decide whether Wynn Resorts is deserving of a key environmental permit to move ahead with its proposed casino/hotel in Everett.
Healey, a Charlestown resident and casino opponent, has argued strongly for a broader study of the casino’s traffic impacts. The governor’s secretary of transportation, Stephanie Pollack, rejected Healey’s arguments in a letter and staff documents submitted to Beaton, but she also personally wrote a letter to the attorney general explaining her actions.
What follows is a copy of a letter from Healey to Pollack in July and Pollack’s personal response to Healey on Aug. 21.
Healey letter to Pollack/July 13, 2015
Dear Secretary Pollack:
I write to thank you for inviting my staff to meet on June 22 to discuss our concerns regarding the local and regional traffic and transit impacts of Wynn MA LLC’s resort casino (Casino) in Everett. We agreed at that meeting to follow up, and we take this opportunity to reiterate our views on how those concerns should be addressed. Our goal is to ensure that the environmental review for the Casino project is consistent with the requirements of the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act (MEPA), and in particular, that all necessary data are taken into account to facilitate a full evaluation of alternatives, impacts, and necessary mitigation measures.
As you know, the Commonwealth has only one chance to analyze traffic and transit impacts properly and develop a workable plan to mitigate harms to commuters and residents. Once the Casino is constructed and local roads are modified, they are unlikely to be meaningfully altered if traffic and other transportation problems worsen. For that reason, it is imperative that the Commonwealth use the best tools at its disposal to analyze the traffic impacts associated with the Casino.
We have significant concerns that the traffic study the Administration will consider during this process is being conducted by Wynn’s own consultants. For this project, that approach is insufficient. We believe it is critical that MassDOT and the Commonwealth benefit from an independent analysis of the traffic impact, paid for by Wynn, before considering any mitigation measures.
In our view, it is not only appropriate, but necessary, that the analysis for MassDOT employ the Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization’s Central Transportation Planning Staff (CTPS) regional travel demand model, as would be typical in the case of other regionally significant projects. While we recognize that MassDOT normally uses the CTPS model only for its own projects, the magnitude of the Casino’s impact in this very densely populated urban area and on the vital transportation networks that serve it and the region makes it akin to the types of projects for which MassDOT would routinely use CTPS modeling and therefore justifies its use here. We urge MassDOT not to endorse a MEPA certificate for the Wynn Casino until CTPS has modeled realistic alternatives, and Wynn develops a regional traffic mitigation plan based on this independent analysis.
The Casino will impact residents well beyond the immediate vicinity of the facility. Chief among our concerns are local traffic impacts on the North Washington Street Bridge, Rutherford Avenue and Sullivan Square in Boston, and Assembly Square and Union Square in Somerville, and regional traffic impacts on I-93. Those impacts stand to threaten the local economies, redevelopment plans, and air quality of affected communities. In particular, like your Office and the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EEA), the Attorney General’s Office is very concerned that traffic impacts from the Casino as proposed will be entirely incompatible with the City of Boston’s previously approved plans for the North Washington Street Bridge, Rutherford Avenue and Sullivan Square. We believe careful consideration of that issue now is essential to an effective MEPA process. In our view, Boston’s pre-existing plans represent an alternative that the CTPS model should incorporate and which Wynn must fully analyze fully in its Second Supplemental Environment Impact Report (SSFEIR) to conform with MEPA.
As your Office and EEA have called for in prior communications during the MEPA process, we agree Wynn must develop a mitigation proposal that also will accommodate existing traffic, increased traffic due to planned projects in Somerville, and anticipated increased Casino-related traffic. We strongly urge your Office to insist on a multi-stakeholder process to develop a viable, comprehensive, and funded transportation mitigation plan even if some parties decline to participate.
Our responsibility to protect the public necessitates completion of a process that is thorough, collaborative, and transparent, We believe that starts with getting the best possible data regarding the traffic impacts, and then using that to formulate a workable mitigation plan. In our view, the Casino should not move forward without such a plan in place.
We greatly appreciate the opportunity to express our position on these issues and look forward to working together to address our shared concerns. You can reach me directly or contact Richard Johnston, Chief Legal Counsel, at 617.963.2028.
Attorney General Maura Healey
Pollack letter to Healey/Aug. 21, 2015
Dear Attorney General Healey:
I am writing to follow up on your letter of July 13 expressing your concerns regarding the traffic analysis performed for the proposed Wynn Casino project in Everett (EOEA #15060) and on our subsequent phone call. I understand the reasoning behind your request – and similar ones I have received from concerned citizens of Charlestown ‐‐ that MassDOT use the Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization’s (MPO’s) regional travel demand model to quantify and analyze the traffic impacts of the proposed casino. While I appreciate your concerns, as you will see in the attached comment letter which we have filed with MEPA today, MassDOT will not be undertaking such an analysis. I want to make sure you understand why.
The Public/Private Development Unit in MassDOT’s Office of Transportation Planning files many comments with MEPA each year on proposed public and private development projects. To ensure consistency in our approach to the required traffic analysis, MassDOT has prepared Transportation Impact Assessment Guidelines. We work with proponents, with municipalities and with the MEPA office to ensure that project proponents prepare traffic analyses which comply with these guidelines. I know that you have significant concerns that Wynn consultants conducted the traffic study used during the MEPA process and believe that an independent analysis is necessary in this instance. Under MEPA, however, standard practice is that the project proponent funds and/or prepares the required traffic analysis, which is then made available to the commenting agencies and the public throughout the MEPA process and typically undergoes several iterations based upon comments received. That has been the case with the Wynn casino project and MassDOT’s comments on methodology and results have been addressed in each step of the public process. Under MEPA, the project proponent is responsible for doing the traffic analysis and it is not our experience that this approach in any way undermines the validity or utility of the traffic analysis results, especially given the oversight provided during the process by MassDOT and MEPA.
I know that another concern is the magnitude of the Casino’s impacts, which you have argued make it akin to the types of projects for which MassDOT might use the regional travel demand model. The distinction between those projects that are analyzed using the travel demand model and those that are not is not, however, the number of trips generated. The regional travel demand model is not used for developer‐proposed projects but for projects where MassDOT is proposing a project which actually would change the regional travel network. Indeed, if MassDOT were to advocate for use of the regional travel model based on the magnitude of trips generated, it is unlikely that the Wynn casino project would require such additional analysis. While I understand that the number of trips generated is of real concern to you and others, the projected traffic impacts of the Wynn Casino are no larger than many other projects that have been reviewed through the MEPA process without requiring the use of the regional travel demand model. For example, MassDOT has provided feedback on traffic generated by the Westwood Station Project (Westwood), the Northborough Crossing Project (Northborough), the Northwest Development Project (Burlington), the Old Colony Place Project (Plymouth), and the Patriot Place Project (Foxborough) without requesting or requiring use of the regional travel model – and all of those projects had traffic impacts that exceeded 20,000 vehicles per day.
The last issue I want to address is your concern – one shared by the City of Boston – that the proposed casino is incompatible with the City’s plans for Rutherford Avenue and Sullivan Square. We understand that many people believe that the redesign is a “done deal” since late 2013, when the City of Boston determined after a five‐year planning process that their preferred alternative for a reconstructed Rutherford Avenue is an at‐grade boulevard with reduced traffic lanes. But that process did not produce a design for this important project that can be thoroughly evaluated by MassDOT and the public. MassDOT supports the City’s efforts to advance its plans for the future of Rutherford Avenue and Sullivan Square and in July 2014 MassDOT executed an agreement with the City to fund the 25% design plans using a federal earmark. While that effort is progressing, until the design is advanced MassDOT cannot provide detailed feedback on the proposed redesign or hold required public hearings. MassDOT’s understanding is that City of Boston plans to begin actual construction in 2020, assuming of course that the proposed design works and funding can be obtained.
Thus, while the City of Boston has a compelling vision for the future of Rutherford Avenue and Sullivan Square, it does not yet have a project with a design far enough along that MassDOT (or any other interested stakeholder) can evaluate in any detail. For reasons of both fairness and efficiency, the MEPA process requires each project proponent to account for all other private and public projects that precede it; projects for which a MEPA filing has occurred are required to be taken into account in the traffic analysis for all subsequent filers that affect the same area of the transportation network. But the City of Boston has not initiated state or federal environmental review for its Rutherford Avenue and Sullivan Square redesign and cannot do so until the design process has advanced. So the concerns that you raise about compatibility with a future configuration of Sullivan Square are not ones which can easily be resolved within the MEPA process for the Wynn casino.
In short, there is simply no basis for requiring this one project proponent – and this one alone – to conduct an independent traffic analysis using the regional travel model or to evaluate its impact on a roadway reconfiguration that has yet to be designed and filed with MEPA.
Nevertheless, MassDOT understands and shares your concerns about the relationship between the Wynn Casino project and the City of Boston’s longer‐term plans for Rutherford Avenue and Sullivan Square. We believe, however, that the issue is best addressed through a regional working group that includes the full range of state agencies, municipalities and other stakeholders. MassDOT is ready either to convene or participate in such an effort. Indeed, we believe that such a regional working group could address all of the transportation issues associated with the impact of the casino and other planned development on future conditions in the area of Rutherford Avenue and Sullivan Square. Any such effort could be informed by ongoing efforts at MassDOT and the MBTA to conduct technical analyses of the future conditions for that area as they are impacted by the plans for Rutherford Avenue and Sullivan Square as well as the Green Line Extension project, the reimagining of McGrath Boulevard and planned private development in nearby communities. MassDOT would be happy to work with others to refine the models developed for those efforts in order to inform the work of the regional working group. And perhaps – as we suggest in the attached MEPA comments – such a process could produce a Sullivan Square mitigation plan that could in turn unlock the $25 million in funding that Wynn has set aside for making longer‐term improvements to Sullivan Square. If such a working group is convened, I would welcome your participation.
While I know that this is not the answer you might have wanted, I hope that you now understand the positions that MassDOT has taken. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me.
Stephanie Pollack
Massachusetts Secretary of Transportation