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jmei

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  1. The Boston Globe had an article on the misinformation around offshore wind and whales today. Here's a snippet: ----- Experts from both federal agencies said they are prioritizing the whales, and will be constantly monitoring their status and tweaking regulations as needed to protect them. “At this point, there is no scientific evidence that noise resulting from offshore wind site characterization surveys could potentially cause whale deaths,” NOAA said on a website dedicated to questions about whales and wind. “There are no known links between large whale deaths and ongoing offshore wind activities.” None of this has stopped the false narrative that offshore wind is to blame for dead whales. A deceased female North Atlantic right whale near Joseph Sylvia State Beach on Martha's Vineyard, Mass., was discovered on Jan. 28. CREDIT: WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC/NOAA PERMIT # 24359. That played out in late January, when a right whale known to researchers as whale #5120 washed ashore near Joseph Sylvia State Beach on Martha’s Vineyard. There were clear signs of a potential cause of death: a rope entangled near the whale’s tail. Because of harsh weather, experts from NOAA Fisheries and the International Fund for Animal Welfare, which responds to stranded marine mammals in the area, weren’t able to perform a necropsy right away. Nonetheless, almost immediately, the seeds of a conspiracy took root online. In a Facebook post shared nearly 600 times, an antiwind activist named Rachel Rothe wrote that people shouldn’t trust what they saw in the media about the presence of a rope. “They say it was a rope entanglement near the whale’s tail, and yet … this eyewitness shared a different perspective of what she saw with her own eyes,” wrote Rothe, attaching screenshots of texts claiming the damage to the whale’s tail was from being hauled onto the beach post-mortem. In another post, Rothe wrote, “2 biggest construction projects the Atlantic has ever known are ongoing within 14 miles of the Vineyard - not to mention cable laying even closer and extensive sonar survey work for the many projects in the pipeline. But nothing to see here folks- nothing to see here.” The Vineyard Wind project is currently under construction 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, and other projects are planned for the area. As it bounced around the internet, with others reposting with comments about “NOAA corruption” and “wind power hurts whales,” biologists from nine organizations completed the initial necropsy. Not only were they able to point to a likely cause — chronic entanglement — but they were also able to trace the ropes back to a source — Maine — thanks to the purple markings on it. A section of the rope found entangled on the right whale had a purple zip tie nub. NOAA FISHERIES But still, the post gained steam, with Facebook users calling NOAA liars and saying federal officials were covering up the role of offshore wind. The posts appeared on individual users’ pages and groups, including Protect Our Coast, NJ, which opposes offshore wind in New Jersey and, according to Brown researchers, has entered partnerships with think tanks that receive money from the fossil fuel industry and its allies. And Rothe, who made the original post, was previously hired to design a billboard for Protect Our Coast, NJ, and a group called Defend Brigantine Beach, another organization identified in the Brown University report. “Dear Ocean, we’ll fight for you,” said the billboard on Route 30 in Atlantic City, displaying a whale’s tail on one side and an image of offshore wind turbines with the words “Stop Offshore Wind” on the other. Rothe did not respond to interview requests. To those who have spent their careers studying right whales, the necropsy findings weren’t a surprise. “We know exactly what’s killing right whales,” said Robert Kenney, a whale researcher at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography. “There has never been a conclusive necropsy done on a right whale that was older than one year where the findings were [anything] other than ‘died by entanglement,’ ‘died by ship collision.’” And while the current spate of dead whales is troubling, it’s also not new. NOAA has been tracking unusually high deaths for humpback whales since 2016, and for North Atlantic right whales since 2017 — before offshore wind development began.
  2. I should add that the new multifamily housing really ought to be built close to town centers/MBTA stations to encourage more mass transit, less driving and more walkable town centers. But the areas close to town centers are already generally occupied by large single family lots who aren't looking to sell, so instead the new construction is being forced out into wilderness areas, which is very much a bad thing and a clear unintended negative consequence.
  3. I agree, folks should be under no impression that any new housing to be built to comply with the MBTA law is required to be or will be "low income." It will most likely be market rate housing, which means it will be expensive. But reducing housing prices requires market rate housing to be built. More supply inextricably leads to lower prices. As I stated earlier: "The point is that (1) new multifamily housing is still cheaper than new single family housing, (2) expensive new multifamily housing ages into more affordable multifamily housing and (3) rich people move into the new construction, leaving their old housing for middle-class people, and so on and so forth down the line until more affordable housing opens up (this chain does not happen as quickly unless there is new housing to upgrade to)." I also think you are confusing causation with correlation. It is not the case that the new construction caused local rents to go up. It's instead that there is so much demand for housing within commutable distance of Boston (driven by the vibrant economic pillars of life sciences, tech, healthcare and higher ed that generate large numbers of well-paying jobs), there is very little new supply closer to the city and so young professionals are being forced to move farther and farther west to find reasonably affordable housing. There have always been folks who have wanted to move from Boston/Cambridge/etc. to the suburbs to have more space for their growing families. The issue now is that inner-ring suburbs like Lexington, Weston, Wellsley, etc. refuse to zone anything other than increasingly unaffordable single-family homes on huge lots, which makes those towns largely inaccessible to first-time buyers (the average home price in Lexington is $1,425,246). So those folks have to look farther west, which simultaneously encourages builders to produce luxury new multifamily housing while also simultaneously raising rents for existing housing. So it's not that A is causing B, it's that C is causing both A and B. What's the solution? Build more housing everywhere but spread it out. There's no reason for a town 10 miles from Boston to have two-acre minimum lots for the entire town. Every town within commutable distance of Boston should have some mixed-use multifamily housing. That's what the MBTA law was meant to spur. But instead you have towns like Milton (average home price: $948,005) who refuse to give an inch and force other towns to pick up the slack.
  4. Yes, developers want to maximize revenue, but, as you note, it always gets negotiated down through the permitting process and the number of actual buildings that get built that max out the zoning requirements is very small, especially out in the suburbs.
  5. I would love to hear one example of a town that was actually ruined because they built multifamily housing. As you all know, this is a subject which engenders strong emotions, so if there was a good example, there would definitely have been a lot of articles written about it. I’m genuinely curious. Even the IBM example (which I found, thanks for the tip) required new sewage to be built, and the tax base from 780 new expensive units on what was a derelict commercial facility will generate enough taxes to at least partially offset the strain on schools.
  6. The factual data proves you wrong. I’d guess that I could count the number of 500+ unit developments west of 95 on two hands.
  7. Per a quick Google search, looks like rent at Maynard Crossing is $3,145.00 to $3,935.00 a month. Average Maynard home sells for $540,000, which, with 20% down and prevailing interest rates, is roughly a $3,527.41 monthly payment.
  8. We’ve already covered this, man. Even an expensive unit there is cheaper than the average Maynard single family house, which is the point. As a side note, I could not quickly find any 800 unit new developments on the Fitchburg line. Maybe I’m just bad at Googling.
  9. It’s about what the developer can sell to future occupants. If you look at actual housing developments in the suburbs, they rarely max out space. The Maynard development is a good example of that.
  10. Yup, that one. It’s 180 units of residential housing and 143 units of senior housing.
  11. That is absolutely not true. Remember, this is expensive new housing. Those folks will want green space, parking, distance from their neighbors. It’s exaggerating the math for scare tactics.
  12. Definitely forced by the state. But, as mentioned, it’s a pretty tiny cost.
  13. There was no “Milton project.” No actual housing project has ever been proposed that even comes close to that number. That number is the absolute maximum number of units that could have been built if you multiplied the area subject to the new zoning by the maximum occupancy of the new zoning. It’s a made up scare number. Ditto for the Wrentham number.
  14. What Maynard development are you talking about? Maynard Crossing has 180 residential units.
  15. If a town wants the benefit of being adjacent to an MBTA station, they have to bear the tiny cost of theoretically allowing for one multifamily building. That’s it.
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