(The following article by Susan Weinstein was published in the Taunton Gazette.)
BOSTON — State transportation officials say their decision to halt environmental permitting in the Hockomock Swamp does not signal an end to a Fall River/New Bedford commuter rail plan.
The MBTA has simply asked the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers to put the permitting process on holdwhile Gov. Mitt Romney analyzes the costs of all rail expansion plans, Transportation Department spokesman Jon Carlisle said.
“The MBTA has not taken the Fall River/New Bedford line off the table,” Carlisle said. “But it would be imprudent to spend staff time and money on the project right now.”
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority was in the midst of federal permitting for work it plans to do near the abandoned rail bed in the Hockomock Swamp, an area of critical environmental concern, as it extends the Stoughton route south through Easton and Raynham.
A May 13 letter to Andrew Brennan, MBTA Environmental Affairs director, states Brennan told Corps staffer Alan Anacheka-Nasemann that his agency “was no longer pursuing the project at this time and did not presently plan to extendrail service to New Bedford and Fall River.”
“Therefore, we have administratively closed your file without prejudice,”Crystal Gardner, chief of the Permits & Enforcement Branch of the Corps’ Regulatory Division, responded to Brennan.
But Carlisle said the “T” plans to ask the Corps to resume the permitting as soon as the project gets the go ahead from Romney.
Kyla Bennett, New England Director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (New England PEER) and a former Environmental Protection Agency biologist, said the case is closed as far as she is concerned.
“It’s a matter of semantics. The Corps is in the driver’s seat. It can close the file when there is no activity and take their people off the case,” she said.
The report marks the second rumored demise of the commuter rail project.
Last month, rail opponents celebrated after a Romney aide told the Boston Globe the governor was shifting his focus and funds to improving existing rail service within the Boston area and was pulling his support from rural and suburban projects to discourage sprawl.
A few weeks later, Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey told Taunton Gazette editors the report had exaggerated the governor’s intention.
Like other rail opponents, however, Bennett believes the $720 million project will not continue because it offers noeconomic benefit and harms the environment.
She is calling on Romney to transfer the ownership of the abandoned rail bed over to the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife.
“It makes sense to close this door once and for all,” Bennett said. “This isn’t smart growth. This is stupid growth.”