Court to Quincy: Boston can rebuild its bridge to Long Island

Boston can rebuild the bridge to Long Island, the Supreme Judicial Court has ruled, upholding a state decision to allow the project despite implacable opposition from the city of Quincy.

The ruling does not mean Boston will immediately re-open Long Island as a new center for treating the addicts and others who have flocked to such areas as Mass and Cass in the years since it closed, because rebuilding the bridge could take several years - as could refitting Long Island for new programs.

Boston owns the island, but part of the bridge, and the road to and from it traverse part of Quincy, which has done everything it can to keep Boston from using the old bridge supports to put up a new span, since Boston shut the bridge in 2014 as it teetered on the verge of collapse. Boston appealed the Quincy Conservation Commission's double rejection of its bridge plans to the state, which overruled the commission and decided to let the work start. Quincy then sued the state.

In its ruling today, the state's highest court acknowledged that cities and towns have the right to block state wetland oversight if they have more stringent rules of their own to protect marshes and other coastal areas, but said Quincy didn't prove their regulations were actually stricter than the state's, so Quincy can just shut up and stop pretending shellfish and fish are the main reason it's opposed to the restoration of Long Island.

Or in more legal terms, the Quincy Conservation Commission, which rejected Boston's bridge plans for allegedly not having enough information about its environmental impact, then rejected it again when Boston filed more details, failed to prove it was relying on any local regulations that were stricter than those used by the state Department of Environmental Protection when the department concluded that Quincy was wrong to block the bridge and that Boston could proceed.

The commission does not explain in its brief, and did not explain in its decisions denying Boston's application, how its own analysis differs from the analysis that the DEP was authorized to perform. Accordingly ... we conclude that the DEP's superseding order of conditions preempts the commission's determination.

In fact, the court wrote, as far as it could tell, the commission used state regulations in determining the bridge piers in particular would harm the local environment:

The regulations that the commission cited in its initial decision exclusively were DEP regulations supplementing the act. ... Therefore, the commission did not rely on the local ordinance for its decision on the piers. As such, the DEP's analysis regarding the piers controls because the DEP's interpretation of the act supersedes that of the commission.

Moreover, even if the commission also applied the local ordinance to the piers, its analysis cannot stand because the ordinance does not treat more stringently than the act the factors that the commission considered. As just discussed, the commission was concerned in its decisions with the impact that the piers would have on fisheries, wildlife habitat, pollution, land under the ocean, and land containing shellfish. The act addresses these factors. G. L. c. 131, § 40, first par. (addressing "land under . . . waters"), eighteenth par. (addressing "prevention of pollution," "protection of land containing shellfish," "protection of wildlife habitat," and "protection of fisheries"). The regulations do as well. See, e.g., 310 Code Mass. Regs. § 10.25 (land under ocean); 310 Code Mass. Regs. § 10.34 (land containing shellfish). The local ordinance also references these factors, but does not provide rules or definitions more stringent than those found in the act and the regulations. Rather, the local ordinance is concerned almost entirely with the procedure for permit applications. Its substantive provisions are limited to broad "[p]urpose" and "[s]cope" sections, which merely prohibit several activities in protected areas without the commission's approval. These sections do not give the commission additional authority over fisheries, wildlife habitats, pollution, land under the ocean, or land containing shellfish that the DEP does not also have.

The court ruled that the commission's concerns about the road to and from the bridge were similarly not covered by any more stringent local regulation or ordinance.