The new terminal\u2019s primary objective is to provide critical infrastructure to serve offshore renewable energy facilities and accommodate future international shipping.<\/p>\n
This week, the EPA determined that the South Terminal project \u201cis both protective of human health and the environment and meets the substantive requirements of applicable or relevant and appropriate federal and state environmental standards.\u201d The decision follows a 30 day comment period, a convened a public hearing and careful consideration of public comments and input from interested stakeholders.<\/p>\n
Governor Deval Patrick, said: \u201cThis facility makes Massachusetts the East Coast hub for offshore wind development while strengthening New Bedford\u2019s position as a port city. The construction of the terminal helps launch a new clean energy industry in Massachusetts that will create hundreds of jobs, enhance our energy security, and reduce fossil fuel emissions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dredging associated with project will have the added benefit of addressing approximately 225,600 cubic yards of PCB-contaminated sediment with average concentrations of less than 50 parts per million.<\/p>\n
In order to mitigate for the unavoidable loss of a freshwater wetland and salt marsh, intertidal and subtidal habitat, EPA\u2019s final determination commits the Commonwealth to construct 1.02 acres of salt marsh restoration and creation, 22.73 acres of winter flounder spawning habitat, 4.47 acres of intertidal habitat creation or enhancement, 14.91 acres of shallow subtidal enhancement and replacement shellfish beds by planting over 24 million seed shellfish in ten areas of the outer harbour over 10 to 15 years.<\/p>\n
In addition, EPA has imposed a number of conditions to ensure that contaminated soils are handled in a safe and appropriate manner and to minimise the impacts of dredging and construction on fisheries resources in the harbour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued its final approval to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to construct a 28 acre marine terminal in New Bedford Harbor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":10430,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-10429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-americas-greenport"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10429"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10431,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10429\/revisions\/10431"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10429"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=10429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}