After months of uproar and thousands of public comments voicing concern over the climate impacts of a proposed expansion of Hanscom Airport, state environmental officials rejected, for now, the push by the Massachusetts Port Authority and its developers to move forward on the project.
Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Rebecca Tepper last week rejected the draft environmental impact report for the expansion, one of the most critical reviews the state uses to approve or reject large development projects. She has asked the developers to address several issues, including contradictory information about the climate impacts of the proposed expansion.
The proposal to add 17 new hangars and renovate another has drawn ire because critics say it would allow for a vast expansion of private jet flights in the state — among the most polluting forms of transportation — at a time when Massachusetts is trying to slash carbon emissions.
The trade-off, they say, appears to be greater convenience for the billionaires who benefit from the easy access to private jets in exchange for the health of the planet. Massport, meanwhile, has argued that the expansion is needed to meet increased demand for hangar space and to comply with federal requirements to provide transportation services to the public.
Neil Rasmussen, president of the Concord-based historic and environmental group Save Our Heritage, which has helped lead the opposition to the proposed expansion, said he hopes the rejection of the draft environmental impact report will prompt Massport to abandon it.
“It is really outrageous and egregious for us to build up private jet aviation, which is the most ecologically damaging activity a person can engage in without getting arrested,” Rasmussen said. “How can we claim to lead the world and help climate change issues when we’re expanding private jet flight activity?”
The rejection doesn’t mean the airport expansion is dead in the water, said RJ Lyman, Boston lawyer and former director of the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act office, which oversees the environmental review process for proposals such as this. But it depends on how the developers respond, and whether they adequately address the issues raised by the state, he said.
“You cannot mess up twice.”
Jennifer Mehigan, a spokesperson for Massport, said that she “would not expect the developer’s plan to change,” but that they will be gathering and providing additional information as part of the supplemental report requested by Tepper.
Rick Muse, director of operations for North Airfield Ventures LLC and Runway Realty Ventures LLC, which are developing the project, said they “respect the environmental review process and are reviewing the secretary’s certificate.”
But Senator Michael Barrett, whose district includes Hanscom Field and opposes the expansion, called Tepper’s response “as close as an environmental secretary can come to dissing the project outright.”
The state Senate earlier this week passed a climate bill that includes a proposal to require Massport to expand its mission to include environmental resilience and equity and reductions of greenhouse gas emissions in its decision-making.
In her response to the draft report, Tepper pointed to several aspects that seemed misleading, including an apparent undercount of the number of private jets that would be accommodated by the expansion and a claim the expansion would actually result in a net decrease in greenhouse gas emissions.
The developers have said aircraft owners would be more likely to relocate to Hanscom as their base after the expansion, instead of relying on more frequent “ferry flights” from Hanscom to other locations where they were based. That, they wrote, would result in a reduction of 524.9 metric tons of carbon dioxide — equivalent to taking 125 cars off the road for a year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies calculator.
However a study commissioned by Save Our Heritage and prepared by the Cambridge-based consultant Industrial Economics Inc., which was cited in Tepper’s response to the developers, found that flight data and trends don’t support the idea that aircraft owners would be inclined to relocate, meaning those reductions weren’t likely to happen.
What’s more, the Industrial Economics study estimated the new hangars could potentially accommodate far more aircraft than had been projected the developers in its filing — between 66 and 79, rather than the 40 to 55 in the filing — resulting in an increase in greenhouse gas emissions of up to 161,348 metric tons per year. Those emissions are equivalent to driving more than 38,000 cars for a year, or burning 177.8 million pounds of coal, according to the EPA calculator.
A 2023 report by the Institute for Policy Studies, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C., found that more than 30,000 private flights departed from Hanscom between January 2022 and July 2023, heading for 761 unique destinations, at least half of which appeared to be for recreational or luxury travel. What’s more, roughly 41 percent of those flights were less than an hour long. Because the most fuel is used during takeoff, short-hop flights such as those are the least energy efficient.
The institute’s report was based on data from the Federal Aviation Authority’s public tracking registry, but it noted that some jet owners, including Boston-area billionaires Robert Kraft, Jim Davis, John Henry, and Paul Fireman, had removed their jets from the registry.
As plans for Hanscom’s proposed expansion have wended their way through the application process, public outrage has grown. Earlier this year, 20 activists, including some from Extinction Rebellion Boston, were arrested after disrupting private jet flights at Hanscom. The outcry — including from actress and activist Ashley Judd — contributed to a flood of public comments, prompting officials to extend the comment period.
In her response to the developers, Tepper wrote that nearly all of the roughly 1,500 comment letters from legislators, local officials, residents, and community groups, as well as a petition signed by 13,000 people, “expressed opposition to the project and identified concerns with its impacts, particularly with respect to climate change and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.”
Tepper has asked the developers to file a supplemental report that would include a response to the Industrial Economics study; an analysis of the so-called social cost of carbon, which accounts for the economic damages associated with the increased greenhouse gas emissions from the project; and consideration of project alternatives to avoid or minimize environmental impacts.
There’s no deadline for when the developers have to submit the supplemental report. Once they have, the public will have 30 days to comment, though the state can opt to extend that period.
Sabrina Shankman can be reached at sabrina.shankman@globe.com.