The arrest of an Air National Guard member who served at Joint Base Cape Cod is having a ripple effect. The incident led to the Air Force’s decision to suspend the 102nd Air Intelligence Wing’s primary mission while an investigation is conducted, and now the Association to Preserve Cape Cod is calling on the Healey Administration to take advantage of that situation and re-think how Joint Base Cape Cod is used.
In a letter to Gov. Maura Healey the APCC’s executive director Andrew Gottlieb said it’s time to revisit the lease extension signed with the military for the state-owned 20,000-acre Base in the final days of the Baker Administration.
“Look at what's the highest and best use of the land at the Base. And from where we sit there are two overriding challenges facing Cape Cod right now. One is maintenance of water quality, the other is providing a sufficient amount of durable affordable housing,” Gottlieb told CAI.
In the letter, Gottlieb said the state has a “generational opportunity” to solve some of the state’s most pressing economic and environmental challenges.
The letter said Coast Guard Air Station Cape Cod on Joint Base Cape Cod remains an essential use, but developing rental and ownership housing units on some of the southern portion of the Base could “help alleviate the Cape’s housing shortage,” and “enhance the local business climate” by providing housing for working people who are too often shut out of the housing market.
The APCC letter is not just a call for action. It offers some specific ideas.
“Use of the Base and its existing resources provides an opportunity for housing development to become a vibrant carbon neutral community with heating and cooling provided by redevelopment of the wastewater treatment plant at the Base to include anaerobic digestion and power provided by renewable energy,” the letter says.
It goes on to say such a development could be “the single most transformative step that can be taken to address housing needs of the region with minimal environmental impact and a positive net effect on the climate.”
The Healey Administration has not yet responded to the APCC letter.
Gottlieb told CAI he is hopeful the administration will respond favorably.
“We’re encouraged by the early stages of the administration and are hopeful that they at least see the value in having the conversation. Nobody is talking about shutting the Base down. What we’re talking about is having a thoughtful conversation about how to use this public resource for as many public benefits as can be wrung out of it.”
The northern 15,000 acres of Joint Base Cape Cod comprise the Upper Cape Water Supply Reserve, from which the five Upper Cape towns draw their drinking water.
The APCC says the current arrangement offers “limited protection” for the water supply and that reexamining the uses of the Base offers an opportunity to provide “permanent and broader” protections.
