Testimony of Benjamin Cronin, Ph.D., In Favor of S. 2791, An Act Relative to Preventing the Discharge of Radioactive Materials
To the Joint Committee on the Judiciary of the Massachusetts Legislature
To the Hon. Chairs and Members of the Joint Judiciary Committee:
My name is Dr. Benjamin Cronin, and I am testifying in favor of Emergency Bill S. 2791, An Act relative to preventing the discharge of radioactive materials.
This bill comes in response to the Holtec Corporation, owner of Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, and their plan to dump one million gallons of irradiated wastewater into Cape Cod Bay. Holtec, and any other predatory and irresponsible actors, must never be allowed to destroy our common rights and ancient liberties, to use the language of the 18th century, by dumping irradiated wastewater into Cape Cod Bay. We do not consent to a single drop of that water in our bays, and we ask the legislature to enact the popular will – and to codify popular revulsion – by preventing anyone from dumping it there, today and for all time
A few words about myself: I am an historian of southeastern Massachusetts, and I grew up and currently reside in Duxbury. I graduated from Williams College with Highest Honors in History and Political Science, and hold a Ph.D in History from the University of Michigan. I’ve taught at both four and two year colleges, and wrote my doctoral dissertation on early Plymouth County, particularly the powerful, enduring, and continuing effort by the several Towns to preserve their common resources.
The early Town Meetings in Plymouth County show that the several Towns overwhelmingly spent the most time and effort on the preservation of their – of our – Commons. The Commons – lands, waters, and resources that belong to everybody in general, and to nobody in particular, places like the sea and its shores, forests and wetlands – have been regarded as Common from an early date, including in the Roman Law.
Likewise, Magna Carta, The Great Charter of English liberties, the foundation of the Common Law, is typically understood to include The Charter of the Forests, from 1217, which restored to the People of England their right to do things like gather firewood, graze livestock, fish, hunt, and gather on the commons of the realm. These documents are a part of our legal and political fabric; they quite literally precede the Massachusetts and the US Constitution, by over 500 years.
Locally, both Wampanoag and English inhabitants of these lands zealously guarded their common resources.
For the Wampanoag, preservation of the Commons was built into not only to everyday practices, but to larger systems of knowledge, of metaphysics, and legend.
The English Towns, so different from the Wampanoag in some ways, shared their concern with the Commons. Here is what the Plymouth Town Meeting had to say over three centuries ago:
Whereas sundry of the Inhabitants of The Town of plimonth haveing Takein in Certaine Tracts of Common Lands To The prejudace of sundry Neibhours whereupon the Inhabitants of sd Town Att a town Metting held at plimouth on the 15th day of May 1699 [appointed] agents for & trustes in the behalf of said town to defend the sd Commons from particular [Intrusions] & In the Town's Behalf to Warne aney of sd Inhabitants that have Made aney Incloser of sd towns Commons to Remove theire fences of said Comons and upon Theire Neglecting or Refussing in Convenient time soe to doe the agents or trustees above Mentioned are hereby Impowred by sd Inhabitants To Remove all such fences found upon sd Towns Commons…."1
So when we defend these commons, we are keeping faith with ten thousand years of human history on these shores.
We are also engaged in an effort that is supremely democratic, with a small ‘d’, and supremely republican, with a small ‘r’. As a Commonwealth, we must decide who will rule here: those whom Theodore Roosevelt called “the malefactors of great wealth” – or what Herman Melville called “the kingly common[s]”?
S.2791 will help us answer that question in favor of The Commons, and I urge you to report it favorably out of this Committee.
Thank you.
Plymouth Town Meeting, May 15, 1699, in Records of the Town of Plymouth: Vol. 1, 1636-1705. Published by Order of the Town. (Plymouth, Mass.: Avery & Doten, 1889), pp. 270-71.