The Minute Man National Park and Walden Pond in Concord were ranked among 2024’s most endangered historic sites as the proposed expansion of a private jet airfield could increase nearby noise and emissions.
In a ceremony at Old Manse in Concord Wednesday, leaders from the National Trust for Historic Preservation unveiled their annual list and pushed back on plans to add more hangars to the Hanscom airfield.
Executive Director of the Walden Woods Project Kathi Anderson said the new designation is important to raise awareness of the threat to these sites that the expansion would pose.
“It will diminish the tranquility of these sites and will also cause jet pollution,” Anderson said. “But the most important environmental impact of private jet travel relates not just to this area, but to the globe. Because private jet traffic is the most climate-impactful type of travel.”
A report issued by the Institute for Policy Studies estimated that at least half of all flights through the airfield between early 2022 and mid 2023 were recreational and luxury flights. Private jet travel is the most carbon intensive form of transportation, emitting at least 10 times more pollutants per passenger compared to commercial planes.
Activists have stepped up their opposition to the proposed expansion in recent months, urging Gov. Maura Healey to intervene and get the site’s owner — the quasi-public Massachusetts Ports Authority — to cancel the project. The more than 100 attendees at Wednesday’s event were urged to sign a petition that called on Healey and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg to halt the project and preserve the historic sites.
A Massport spokesperson said that the Hanscom project is not expected to increase airport traffic and the plans are currently under review by state environmental officials.
“Massport recognizes the historical significance of the Minute Man National Historic Park and we work closely with all our neighboring communities to reduce our operational impact,” Jennifer Mehigan, Massport’s director of media relations, wrote in an email to GBH News.
State Rep. Simon Cataldo of Concord said it’s important to recognize that these places are at risk.
“When people love places, they're willing to do whatever they possibly can to protect them and to save them,” Cataldo told GBH News. “They're a rich part of our American democratic tradition, and they're worth preserving not only to remember the past but try to usher in a future that's better for all of us.”
Ashley Judd, an actor and the goodwill ambassador for the UN Population Fund who headlined Wednesday’s event, stressing the importance of protecting these sites. Judd also has a master’s degree in public administration from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
“More than 75 percent of us [people worldwide] have never even flown in a plane,” Judd said. “I myself, of course, have flown in a private plane. That was in the past. My values today are different because I know better.”
Other speakers included Strong Medicine Bear of the Natick-Ponkapoag Praying Indians, author and historian Douglas Brinkley and Paul O’Shaughnessy, vice president of the Friends of the Minuteman Park.
The National Trust’s annual list calls attention to cultural landmarks they see as in danger of being lost. This year, that also includes a West Virginia church that serves as a reminder of Black coal miners’ contributions and a museum in the U.S. Virgin Islands that’s fallen into disrepair.
