Interviewed by Jessica A. Wall
Boston Bar Association Environmental and Energy Law Section Co-Chair Jessica A. Wall recently interviewed Bonnie Heiple, Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. This interview, which has been edited and condensed, explores Heiple’s journey to her present role and her goals for her tenure.
Wall: Can you share a bit about how you came to environmental law?
Commissioner: I’ve been interested in environmental issues since I was a little kid. My parents are an environmental engineer and a science teacher, so the topic was a thread throughout my daily life growing up. In college, I interned at Connecticut’s environmental agency, and then during law school I interned at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. So, I had snippets of experience at both the State and Federal level, which was a good early education: sitting on both sides of the table, seeing how they interact with each other, with the regulated community, with lawyers and consultants. And then, after law school, I went into the private sector where I was lucky to have a somewhat rare mix of environmental and energy matters to work on right from the start.
Wall: You’ve been Commissioner since March 2023. Can you talk a little bit about what attracted you to the role and how you have approached it?
Commissioner: What attracted me to the role initially was the sense of alignment with the mission. The Governor and Lieutenant Governor have been very clear since even before day one in office about the fact that climate and the environment would be a priority. If you have all of this momentum and support and you think you can actually harness that, it’s exciting. I wasn’t coming in to right the ship at an agency that needed course correction. This was, and is, a place where so much truly nation-leading work in so many areas has occurred. It is really important to me to acknowledge and respect that and build on that while pushing it forward: keeping a focus on our core mission – air, water, land – while also expanding into areas that really cross-pollinate – things like climate resiliency, environmental justice. It’s hard to do both, but we’re doing both – and we’re pushing forward on all fronts.
Wall: I’m curious if there’s an average day or week.
Commissioner: There’s probably no average, but that’s part of the charm. The calendar admittedly looks like a game of Tetris gone terribly wrong, but that is reflective of the great spectrum of opportunities. Meeting internally with staff, with stakeholders, with others in the Administration. And then there are the events and festivities, which was an interesting transition because it was not something that we did so much of in private practice, but I have come to value them. For the prior fifteen years, my work product was billed in six-minute increments, so at first it was hard for me to get away from the notion that if I’m out on the road at a ribbon-cutting or the like, I have to get back to the office and ‘make up’ for that time. But I’ve really come to value those events as opportunities to celebrate the work.
Wall: I’m sure that your presence at these events means a lot to people, right?
Commissioner: I’ve gotten better with the “groundbreaking” shovel, I will say. I actually toss the dirt; not everyone tosses it!
Wall: There’s been a lot of hiring at MassDEP in the past year and a half or so; could you talk about your approach to hiring.
Commissioner: That is reflective of the fact that the Governor and Lieutenant Governor in particular, are really focused on this work — not only in messaging their direct support for the environmental and energy agencies, but also in funding Energy and Environmental Affairs at a truly historic level. For DEP, that meant an almost 10% increase in our budget, which has allowed us to support all the emerging contaminant work that we’re doing across media, including in things like drinking water. If you’re a municipality or company that is encountering a problem, having a live person here at DEP and at our partner entities to answer the phone and help walk you through that has really made a big difference in our success on a lot of those programs. The hiring allows us to both develop the big ideas and policies and priorities while also making sure that they’re working in the field.
Wall: What do you see on the horizon in the next few years?
Commissioner: We’ve received some exciting recognition that highlights Massachusetts’ efforts to reduce food waste. Just think about the food waste that’s produced by large outfits, such as hospitals and universities. You think about going to college – students taking one of everything in the dining hall and then ditching what they don’t want. Keeping that out of landfills and diverting it may not be the most glamorous issue, but we have really limited landfill capacity in Massachusetts. Large supermarket chains may take items off the shelf before the ‘use by’ date or while it’s still healthy, nourishing food. Diverting those items to hungry people is crucial. When food goes into landfills, it rots and produces an incredible amount of methane, which is one of our most potent greenhouse gasses. We have been able to reduce the methane that’s coming from food waste by more than 25% through these diversion programs.
Wall: The Cumulative Impact Analysis in Air Quality Permitting initiative is pretty new and has been the source of a lot of questions for folks.
Commissioner: We’re very excited about this program. It’s gotten a lot of attention because it is really novel and not something that has happened in other states to whom we could look for a ready playbook. Credit to the folks at DEP who designed this entire structure for this program, not just writing the regulations, but all of the accompanying tools and mapping and technical support. This program directly responds to concerns that we’ve heard from residents over the years; when a new facility is going to be sited in their community, they often would say things like, “There are already a lot of facilities that are polluting our air here. How could you possibly allow another one?” We didn’t really have a good mechanism for doing that type of holistic evaluation of what’s already in the community. The folks in our Air Bureau created this mechanism to directly account for that by looking at environmental and public health indicators and requiring applicants to perform calculations and projections in each of those areas – asthma rates is one of them, for example – to evaluate what a given facility would mean in context. That is done up front: before an entity comes to us for an air permit, they have to conduct both this analysis and improved outreach. The community will now have advance access to information about what’s being proposed so that when it comes time for public comment periods and hearings, people aren’t having to learn about the project for the first time: they will have had the ability to think about it, talk about it with their neighbors, and really participate more meaningfully. It makes a tremendous leap toward being able to respond to the concerns about what’s additive, will inform the types of mitigation that we require, and will also give us a basis for making permit decisions.
Wall: What do you see as MassDEP’s challenges?
Commissioner: One of our biggest challenges is not operating in a vacuum, and constantly being cognizant of the impacts that our agency actions have in the real world and the cost associated with some of them. While environmental stewardship is key to why Massachusetts is such a great place to live, so is a thriving economic environment. It is trying to strike that balance of what makes sense and analyzing what sort of risks and costs does that come with, keeping in mind the goals of our state, of our residents, of the administration, and figuring out what we can do as an agency to help meet those objectives.
Wall: Are there milestones, projects, or initiatives of which you are most proud so far?
Commissioner: While the work largely predated me, I had the benefit of coming in to help finalize our Watershed Permitting and Title 5 regulations that apply on the Cape. These requirements really are going to help undo and correct for decades and decades of pollution to our Cape waterways. The satisfaction comes from seeing all the tremendous work done by the DEP team and others, going up and down the Cape, talking to communities, hosting more public meetings and listening sessions than I think they’ve ever seen for any type of action or regulations package. And recognizing that this was a really important step, and one that was long overdue.
Wall: If you hadn’t pursued a legal career, what do you think you’d be doing?
Commissioner: I’d be a baker. You can’t answer emails while you’re doing it, you have to be fairly precise which appeals to the ‘Type A’ parts of my personality, but overall, I just find it very satisfying. And I have a sweet tooth, so that helps.
Bonnie Heiple was appointed Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP) by Governor Maura Healey and Massachusetts Secretary of Energy & Environmental Affairs Rebecca Tepper in March 2023. Previously, she practiced environmental and energy law at WilmerHale LLP. Her environmental work included litigation, regulatory compliance, and advising clients in ESG and other rapidly evolving areas. Her energy practice focused on permitting renewable energy generation, transmission, and storage projects across the nation.
Jessica A. Wall is a partner at Andersen & Kreiger LLP. She advises clients concerning environmental, energy and land use issues, permitting and transactional matters, project development, renewable energy projects, wetlands and waterways issues, due diligence, land use, site clean-ups, and compliance and enforcement issues.