Quincy yet again cited for EPA violations by MassDEP

Trashy drain pipe illegally laid by City of Quincy workers
A Quincy Quarry news photo

– News about Quincy MA from Quincy Quarry News.

Quincy has yet again been cited by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (“MassDEP”) for environmental abuse.

In this case, City workers laid pipe without any proper protection between two wetlands.

Granted, while at least one of the two wetlands is arguably a trash-laden swamp, the City of Quincy is supposed to at least try to pretend to keep things clean around the Q.

Koch Kolosseum at North Quincy High?
An old ink rendering

Most recently before this latest inexcusable offense, the City of Quincy was busted for doing dirty tricks late last year by both MassDEP as well as by the Army Corps of Engineers when the City tried to grift a compliant – if not also bending over – Conservation Committee to claim that its but local limited permitting authority was sufficient to allow duly embattled incumbent Mayor Koch’s dubious plans to go forward to add a roughly $7 million modestd capacity parking lot for the money and perhaps a $3 million dollar stadium to the North Quincy High School campus.

Sludge slick near DPW yard
A whistleblower photo

Reasons for this bust include that the City did not then own all of the the needed land for the project as well as the City’s improper attempt to so concurrently duck MassDEP and Army Corps review.

Other past sanctions of the City of Quincy by MassDEP include spanking the city’s Department of Public Works for all manner of hazardous materials violations committed within the DPW’s yard.

In turn, these sanctions gave rise the city having to undertake a likely couple million dollars in infrastructure and operational improvements to effect compliance.

City workers doing what they are known for …
A Quincy Quarry News file photo

The total cost, however, is unknown as the Koch Maladministration has never provided a full and proper accounting of the total cost imposed upon local taxpayers given DPW’s various and long ongoing malpractices.

In this case, the City of Quincy was whacked for taking an entirely new tack: not even bothering to file for the requisite permitting approvals in what one can only properly view as a local grift on the unarguably flawed, variously problematic, and now former Pentagon don’t ask, don’t tell policy are regards personal sexual preference(s).

DPW Commissar Dan “Spanky” Raymondi
A City of Quincy photo

That and Quincy Quarry was not interested in asking Department of Public Works Commissar Dan “Spanky” Raymondi for comment as it has no interest in listening to him drone on and on and on and on some more about “the hard-working men and (few, ed.) women at the DPW when the Quarry knows this is not exactly true, not to mention that the offending construction work should have never been done in the first place.

Even more troubling, however, was the City’s defiant response to its latest sanction by MassDEP after the city was yet again busted.

Among other excuses and delaying tactics used by City Solicitor and inveterate delay game practitioner  Jim Timmons during the apparently several years he dragged out this dispute without success was his offer ” . . . to cap (close, ed,) the pipe on both ends so it would be of no effect . . . “

Mayor Koch’s yet again unsuccessful Consigliere James TImmins
A City of Quincy photo

Granted, Solicitor Timmons did not go to Boston College Law School, much less Harvard Law School; even so, just about anyone with even but merely minimal understanding of environmental protection expected per MassDEP and federal Environmental Protection Agency policies, regulations, rules and/or applicable statues knows that the standard remedy expected in this manner of violation is to return the site to its original condition or effect pluperfectly the alternative option offered.

In this case, the alternative will require that the City of Quincy secure an independent outside watershed study of a considerable amount of acreage.

Per the Quincy Quarry’s in-house environmental expertise, such a study is likely to cost somewhere in the low-six figure range as well as perhaps not able to be completed in time for MassDEP’s July deadline to avoid the imposition of the (current, ed.,) maximum penalty upon the city.

Expect Quincy Quarry to stay on top of this latest example of dirty deeds done by the Koch Maladministration and report of new developments as they break badly for local taxpayers stuck with the bills.

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