Executive Summary
3A zoning enables the construction of less energy intensive multifamily housing which is good for the environment
It also has the potential to reduce traffic volumes, by enabling more of the town's workers, especially its teachers, to live closer to their jobs
Concerns about water and sewerage overuse are completely unfounded
Ultimately, the goal of Marblehead’s 3A zoning plan is to allow the construction of more multifamily housing so that the town’s residents, current and new, have somewhere to live. This likely implies an increase in the town’s population over time.(1)
Some residents are reasonably concerned about what this means for the environment. More people means more consumption of resources which inevitably has an impact on the environment. But, for a variety of reasons, Marblehead’s 3A zoning plan is actually pro-environment.
Climate change
The preeminent issue in the contemporary environmental movement is climate change. And Marblehead is particularly exposed to the effects of climate change. In particular the town’s significant ocean frontage makes it exposed to storm surges which present a flood risk for homes along the coast and in low lying areas. Flood maps from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) make clear just how significant the extent of high risk VE and AE flood zones are in and around Marblehead.
One of the concerns expressed about 3A zoning is that more residents in Marblehead means more emissions which will worsen the effects of climate change. The problem with this line of thinking is that it does not deal with the counterfactual. If Marblehead does not pass 3A zoning, it is not as if the people who would have lived in the intended multifamily housing just disappear, they will just live elsewhere.
If you are concerned about climate change, failing to pass 3A zoning doesn’t positively contribute to solving the problem at all, it just shifts the source of the problem elsewhere. Passing 3A zoning would however contribute positively to solving climate change in at least two ways.
The first is that 3A zoning loosens burdensome government regulation on multifamily housing. Multifamily housing units have lower climate emissions than single family units because they are smaller and therefore less energy intensive to heat and cool.
The University of California, Berkeley has conducted extensive research into the different climate impacts of households in different parts of the country. And you can see this for yourself on their Cool Climate Mapping tool.
The image below shows that the suburbs and towns ringing Boston, with their stocks of predominantly single family housing, have significantly greater climate impacts than towns closer to Boston that have a more even balance of single and multifamily housing (e.g., Brookline).
The second way 3A zoning helps tackle climate change is by making the Commonwealth of Massachusetts a more attractive place to live for more people. Here in Massachusetts, we have the third lowest per-capita emissions out of every state in the country. To put things in perspective, our 8 tons of carbon dioxide emitted per person, per year is just over 20 percent lower than the 10.4 tons emitted by individuals in Florida, a state that is famously attractive to Massachusettians.
And this highlights a crucial fact about climate change, assuming you are concerned about it. It is a global phenomenon with local effects. Marblehead is not, sadly, in charge of its own climate. To the extent Marblehead can do something about it, it is to encourage people to live in places with lower climate emissions.
The issue of climate is a great jumping off point to the next concern we want to tackle: traffic.
Traffic
Emissions related to traffic actually do have a more localized effect as the resulting particulates cause phenomena such as smog and affect air quality in the area. There are also the more aesthetic issues related to traffic such as noise and the frustration of finding parking.
There is some concern that 3A zoning, by potentially increasing Marblehead’s population, will increase traffic in town and exacerbate all of these issues. This concern, while reasonable, is misplaced and doesn’t grapple with what’s actually been driving traffic in Marblehead in recent years.
The first thing to note about traffic in Marblehead is that it has actually been trending downwards for nearly two decades. The Massachusetts Department of Transportation deploys traffic counters in two locations in Marblehead, one on Elm Street west of Curtis Street, and another on Lafayette Street on the border with Salem. What both traffic counters show, along with modeling for years in which MassDOT does not deploy counters, is declining traffic figures.
Intuitively, these findings align with what we would expect. As Marblehead's population has aged, we have fewer people traveling for work, taking kids to school, and taking kids to weekend activities. All of which would reduce car trips and therefore traffic volumes.
However, as compelling as these data are, there are limitations. They represent just two locations in town, neither of which do a good job of capturing traffic flows southwest/northeast which represents the direction of commuters into Boston, as well as service workers commuting into Marblehead.
While there is no direct data on traffic flows in that direction, we can get a proxy by looking at the Census Bureau’s Origin-Destination Employment Statistics. This data allows us to look at the share of individuals employed in the town, but who reside elsewhere, creating additional trips that add to traffic in town.
Between 2011 and 2021, Marblehead’s share of jobs filled by employees from outside the town ticked up from 66 percent to 70 percent. And we can see using the Census Bureau's OnTheMap tool that many of these workers are coming from the southwest (which would not be captured by the traffic counters identified above). While this is not a large change in percentage terms, it does mean hundreds of extra car trips per day and could explain a perception of increased traffic traveling southwest/northeast from/to Marblehead.
3A zoning can help reduce these trips by providing more housing options for workers in town either shortening their time in the car or mitigating the need for them to drive altogether. This is particularly relevant for teachers, many of whom cannot afford to live in the Marblehead school district and are forced to commute here.
Water and Sewerage
A very common misconception about 3A zoning is that it threatens to overwhelm towns’ water and sewer supplies, including Marblehead’s.
This could not be further from the truth. Marblehead gets its water from the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority. Since the 1980s, Massachusetts average water demand has fallen from over 330 million gallons of water to just under 190 million gallons. This is despite the state’s population growing over that time.
The reality is that investments in our water distribution infrastructure, along with more efficient water-based products in our homes (e.g., shower heads) have unlocked huge amounts of untapped capacity as it relates to water. That is not to say we should use it all, but it is flat out false to say there is any near term risk to Marblehead’s access to fresh water resources as a consequence of 3A zoning.
Sewerage is another area of concern often put forward in the face of 3A zoning. Marblehead is part of the South Essex Sewerage District along with several other North Shore towns.(2) SESD is well capitalized with a strong balance sheet and can easily make incremental investments, if needed, to handle additional sewerage from Marblehead.
The Big Picture
Wanting to understand the relationship between 3A zoning and the environment is laudable. Marblehead’s rich character is not just a function of its history, but also of its distinctive natural environment on the Atlantic Coast. We need to preserve not just the town’s historic buildings, but its natural environment as well. 3A zoning is a tool for us to do just that.
(1) It is worth noting that this would be a reversal of the town’s gentle decline in population - Marblehead has about a thousand fewer residents than it did in the 1970s.
(2) Ironically, our membership of SESD was decided by none other than a Select Board-initiated Special Town Meeting in 1972.
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