Cumulative Impact Analysis: Preliminary draft

The one-mile Specific Geographical Area intersects one Burdened Area: block group 250277561012, MassEnviroScreen score 80.9 against a threshold of 75.

Sixteen of the block group's 29 scored indicators are Elevated Indicators, above the 50th percentile statewide.

The score is carried by legacy contamination and impaired streams around the block group, not by measured pollution exposure. None of the sites that drive it is on the parcel.

Preliminary finding: no Disproportionate Adverse Effect is identified in either phase, conditional on the studies still open, and wildfire risk, groundwater threats, pollution cleanup sites and the two noise-linked health indicators are the rows that wait on them.

Neighbouring block group 250277561013, scoring 73.0, is analysed voluntarily.

One proposed site, no noticed alternative: parcel 43-A-1 at 131 Carpenter Hill Road, Charlton.

The Facility Boundary is 17.29 acres: the BESS project area, the gen-tie easement and the driveway, merged.

The SGA is everything within one mile of that boundary, about 2,770 acres, all of it in Charlton.

The gen-tie is scored as a component of the storage facility, so the one-mile distance applies to all of it.

Block group 250277561012 contains every component of the project and scores 80.9. It is a Burdened Area on the score alone.

It qualifies on the score, not on income: median household income is about 82 percent of the state median.

Block group 250277561013, inside the SGA, scores 73.0, two points under the threshold. It is analysed voluntarily.

Block group 250277561022 scores 10.6. No other block group is within a mile.

The environmental effects component scores 86.0, the 99.7th percentile of 5,109 block groups. Pollution exposure scores 23.3, the 15th.

All five effects indicators are above the 80th percentile: cleanup sites, groundwater threats, solid waste, impaired waters, hazardous waste.

Chronic disease prevalence is the second driver: adult cancer, high blood pressure, heart disease, COPD, premature mortality.

Wildfire risk at 77.6 and flood risk at 54.3 are the two elevated indicators most closely coupled to this technology.

Not elevated: traffic, nitrogen dioxide, diesel particulate matter, air toxics, drinking water non-compliance, heat, drought.

Construction impacts are temporary, local, and governed by permits with numeric limits: dust, diesel exhaust, erosion, fuel handling, waste hauling.

The pathways that reach the elevated effects indicators are a spill to soil or groundwater and sediment to the stream south of the pad. Both are covered by firm commitments.

Preliminary determination for every Elevated Indicator: no Disproportionate Adverse Effect during construction.

Two socioeconomic indicators may see a benefit, from construction employment and training.

No combustion, no stack, no process water, no wastewater discharge: the air and water exposure indicators do not move.

The credible event is a battery fire. Wildfire risk is the indicator most coupled to it, and the determination waits on the fire protection engineering report and the hazard mitigation analysis.

Transformer oil is the largest liquid inventory. Secondary containment, an SPCC plan and firewater capture are the commitments that bound the groundwater pathway.

Noise is the one operating impact that reaches homes, and the design has to meet the MassDEP policy at the property line and the nearest residence.

The US record of grid battery fires since 2019, sorted by what is comparable, is set down as context for the Emergency Action Plan, not as a prediction for this site.

On climate: the facility reduces the effects of climate change regionally and adds a small local heat and impervious footprint.

Avoid first: no wetland fill, no work inside mapped rare species habitat, a site in Zone X, no combustion.

Then minimize: clearing held to 10 acres, run-on diverted, containment for every liquid, firewater captured, noise designed to the policy.

Then mitigate: replanting for the acres cleared, a groundwater monitoring program, an Emergency Action Plan with independent review.

Costs are stated in the Application. No figure in this draft.

Reliability: stored electricity for about 120,000 homes for about four hours, delivered through the substation next door.

Revenue to the town over the operating life, in a form the town and the project decide together.

Construction employment and training, with a local hiring preference proposed in the draft plan.

Fire readiness, well protection and conservation are proposals in the draft plan, not commitments, and mitigation is never counted as a benefit.

No Disproportionate Adverse Effect identified, in either phase, on the current record.

The conclusion rests on three unfinished studies: fire protection engineering, the sound study, and the final stormwater and containment design.

The Board makes its own finding under 980 CMR 15.11 and can add enforceable conditions.

This report is reissued when the studies finish and again with the Application. Every version stays published.

Wells and waterways, fire, cumulative burden, noise and property values: raised at every public meeting since April.

Every question and answer is on the Engagement Log, and every commitment it produced is on the tracker.

Tell us a fact this report is missing, and we check it and answer on the log.

Ten residents of a block group inside the SGA can ask for a full analysis of a block group that is not a Burdened Area.

Indicator percentiles read from the state's February 27, 2026 MassEnviroScreen build on September 8, 2026.

Materiality judged on the template's Appendix B factors: standards, perceptibility, measurability, duration, extent, resilience, social and health effects, migration.