Regarding Wheelabrator
Dear Editor,
As a resident of the Riverside neighborhood, I have watched with grave concern the latest proposal by Saugus Wheelabrator/WIN Waste to once again request the expansion of their unlined ash dump in the middle of the Rumney Marsh for another 25 years. Although scheduled to close in 1996, eleven consent orders have allowed them to remain open. It is time to put neighbors’ health concerns and the environment first. Both the trash incinerator and the ash dump are located less than a half mile from the Point of Pines, Riverside, and Oak Island neighborhoods.
In a November 2021 letter from Commissioner Suuberg of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection firmly stated there would be no further expansions allowed, yet Wheelabrator persists.
For those who haven’t read the Feb. 16 Boston Globe article, the Chairman of the Saugus Board of Selectmen, Anthony Cogliano, admitted in a legal deposition that he allegedly forged Saugus residents’ signatures on forms that would benefit Wheelabrator.
He did this allegedly at Wheelabrator’s request while he was attempting to enter into an agreement that would buy off the Town of Saugus for their blessing of the ash dump expansion. What was the class action lawsuit about? It would compensate Revere and Saugus residents who have been plagued for decades by Wheelabrator smells, noise, and toxic ash blowing into their neighborhoods.
Unfortunately, our own City Councillor, Anthony Zambuto, also allegedly went around getting Revere residents to sign these forms. In addition, a Revere PTA Chair was also mentioned in legal documents as allegedly having done the same thing. Although our elected officials should be working on behalf of all residents, Councillor Zambuto has consistently supported Wheelabrator. He has appeared in their commercials and spoken in favor of them at various Revere and Saugus town meetings even though their facility consistently spews pollutants, fouls the air we breath, and poisons the Rumney Marsh. What surprised me was that they were able to infiltrate our school system and ask for favors from a PTA chairperson.
This is outrageous. Currently, they are buying emission reduction credits that make them compliant on paper only. The air all Revere residents breathe is allegedly dirtier and more dangerous because of Wheelabrator.
We have received two years of data from an air quality monitor operating at Gibson Park. The numbers are staggering. Pollutants are 8-16 times higher when winds are blowing from the direction of the incinerator and the ash dump. That means we are not only receiving pollutants from the incinerator stack but from the 50 foot pile of toxic ash that blows into neighborhoods. That’s the same pile they would like to keep adding to for another 25 years.
All Revere residents should be up in arms. We have higher rates of cancer, asthma, and respiratory issues than the rest of the state. We have seen what Wheelabrator’s influence has accomplished in Saugus, we can no longer accept Wheelabrator’s payoffs and influence in the City of Revere. Enough is enough.
Loretta LaCentra
Thinking About Judgement Day
Dear Editor,
Sin is so prevalent and open today that one may think that evil is winning over good. Good will prevail. God will have the last word. He will return to judge the living and the dead. His believers, speaking in love, must stand against evil and call it out, to bring light into the darkness, to illuminate minds unaware of what is happening, to sound an alarm to those going astray with this culture of death, to preserve what is good and to denounce evil.
Our Western culture has been enticed by a lie called “progressivism”, but it is a cancerous misnoma. It should be called “debasementism” because that is what results from this ideology; all forms of ungodliness, attacking all that God has established regarding Life, Marriage, Human Sexuality, Truth and Reality itself. We were made to live with God to guide us and empower us to decern what is good and nobel. Without God, we fall into all sorts of evil and violence. We see it in the news everyday!
Let us repent this Lenten season and seek God’s wisdom and His guidance for our lives. He can enable us to root out this evil that has taken over our culture and world view. He assuredly will return to judge us! And we will face Him as Holy Judge or Merciful Savior. May we be found living lives that bring honor and glory to Him when He returns.
Lucia Hunter
