AG Candidate Palfrey Talks Upper Cape, Environmental Concerns
Quentin Palfrey, a Democratic candidate for Massachusetts Attorney General, visited Bourne last weekend while on the campaign trail.
A Massachusetts native, Mr. Palfrey came to Bourne on Saturday, August 13, for an interview with Bourne Community Access Television. Although he lives in Weston, more than 60 miles north of the Bourne Bridge, Mr. Palfrey is no stranger to Cape Cod.
“I’ve spent a lot of my life on Cape Cod,” Mr. Palfrey said in a phone interview with the Enterprise. “My parents live in Bourne, and throughout my childhood I’ve spent a lot of time here. I love it, and I’m very focused on issues relevant to the Cape.”
Mr. Palfrey previously served as an assistant attorney general, was the first chief of the Health Care Division in the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office and currently serves as acting general counsel for the state’s Department of Commerce. If elected as attorney general, Mr. Palfrey said he wants to be very present in the community of Cape Cod and the islands, an area he feels often is forgotten about by Beacon Hill.
“One of the things I’m really committed to as a candidate for attorney general is making sure that I’m in close touch with communities all across the state, particularly the Cape and the islands,” he said.
While Mr. Palfrey’s campaign touches on a wide variety of issues—from expanding access to health care to promoting ethics and transparency in government—he is particularly concerned with “injecting urgency into the fight against climate change,” per his website. And when it comes to protecting the environment, there is perhaps no place in Massachusetts where that message would resonate more than right here on Cape Cod, he said.
“I’ve had a lot of concern about the Joint Base Cape Cod plans for the machine gun range,” Mr. Palfrey said, adding that the machine gun range was one of the topics discussed in his interview with Bourne Community Access Television.
“I think that we all know that the environment and the economy are interwoven on the Cape,” he said. “We also know the very significant pollution challenges that have come out of Joint Base Cape Cod or in its previous forms. There’s been very significant concern about the effect of the military activity on the sole-source aquifer and on the very delicate natural resources of the Upper Cape.”
The proposed machine gun range at Joint Base Cape Cod would disturb about 199 acres of land, with 170 acres of clear-cutting and an additional 5,000 acres designated as Surface Danger Zones in a 15,000-acre area designated as the Upper Cape Water Supply Reserve, a protected conservation area. The eight-lane range would be used for military training with weapons including grenade launchers, pistols, shotguns and machine guns.
Any new activity that occurs in that area must meet requirements set forth by state law, Mr. Palfrey said, adding that he believes the concern for the proposed plans is warranted, as it would likely not be compatible with the natural resources purposes of water conservation and habitat protection in the area.
“Why would you want to take land that was set aside for conservation purposes—that’s really important for protecting delicate drinking water—and then impose this kind of a risk to the public and to the natural resources, particularly when there are some alternatives?” he said. “The military could accomplish its important objectives in terms of training at other facilities, including potentially Fort Devens, so it’s not like this is the only alternative for them.”
Mr. Palfrey has also been vocal in his opposition to radioactive dumping in Cape Cod Bay as a result of Holtec International’s decommissioning of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth.
“I’ve stood there with a bullhorn in my hand objecting to those plans,” Mr. Palfrey said, “because I think, sort of in a similar way to my concerns about the machine gun range at Joint Base Cape Cod, Holtec dumping radioactive water into Cape Cod Bay is going to have a detrimental impact on the environment. But it’s also going to hurt tourism, it’s going to hurt fisheries and it’s going to hurt a lot of the economic needs of the Cape and Plymouth and the area around Cape Cod Bay.”
In addition to being endorsed by the Massachusetts Democratic Party, Mr. Palfrey has been endorsed by the Sierra Club and 350 Mass, both of which are environmental organizations working to build a climate-safe world. Much of his campaign, he said, has been spent talking and thinking about the impact the attorney general’s office can have on the climate crisis, but he also said he has been paying attention to other regional issues such as the rising cost of housing on Cape Cod.
“I’m going to be really focused on protecting the natural resources of the Cape and also standing up for small businesses, the touring industry, for fisheries, be really focused on consumer protection issues,” Mr. Palfrey said. “If I have the great honor to be attorney general, I will be very committed to advocating for the needs of people on the Cape and the islands in the attorney general’s office.”