The proposed Wynn casino site in Everett just beyond Sullivan Square would pollute the air throughout the region as truckloads of poisonous soil are driven from the contaminated site to ready it for construction, city consultants said at a community meeting yesterday.
Dust from those trucks — carrying dirt laced with arsenic, lead and petroleum hydrocarbons from years of sulfur manufacturing on the former Monsanto chemical site — would likely blow from west to east, toward Boston, environmental consultant Jane Wheeler of CDM Smith told a packed meeting room at Charlestown High School. That’s in addition to a projected 13 percent increase in air pollutants just from traffic. And that’s an average throughout the region, suggesting the rate could be much higher near the casino site.
Of course, all this assumes that Wynn takes extraordinary care in the cleanup, which is expected to last several years before the site is safe to build on. Every vehicle that leaves the site must be washed, including its wheels, to prevent the poison from spreading.
I came to the community meeting not as an environmentalist, but as a mom who lives in Charlestown. Cards on the table: my husband and I were looking forward to hearing about a fancy new place to eat on a Saturday night. Our thought was we’d rather have a luxury casino resort than an idle wasteland of contaminants down the road. An hour into the presentation, I was sufficiently disabused of that notion.
Wynn pulled out all the stops, which I’m sure is why the residents of Everett have already approved of the casino. Attendees last night received a glossy 30-page booklet showing off all the majestic Wynn developments around the world. Apparently, a similar gloss was applied to Wynn’s draft environmental impact report, which city consultants, one after one, portrayed as far from realistic.
I’d like to see Wynn study the impact that its project will have on asthma rates — a huge concern in Boston, where 13 percent of high school students were reported to have symptoms in 2007. The potential environmental harm of this project is plain to see — and it renders all arguments for or against casinos completely irrelevant.
