An Act for Community Empowerment (S.1834): This bill would allow communities to transition to more renewable forms of energy. It would empower cities, towns, and community electric aggregators to use their residents’ electricity buying power to support renewable energy projects of the community’s choosing, while residents benefit directly from the projects.

An Act relative to renewable energy generation and market efficiency (S.1835): This bill aims to improve the customer experience and increase the efficiency of the solar market by making small but significant changes to the interaction between a project owner, off takers, and their utility.

An Act relative to the pesticide board (S.412): This bill ensures that when the pesticide advisory board holds an adjudicatory hearing on pesticide contamination of drinking water, and reaches a decision, the commissioner of the Department of Public Health and the commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection must concur with that decision.

An Act relative to vegetation management (S.409): This legislation would require a vegetation management proposer to negotiate with any community that did not want to use chemicals for vegetation management within their community. If the entity seeking to control the vegetation and the municipality are unable to come to an agreement within 60 days of beginning discussions, the disputes shall be decided by a mutually-agreed upon arbitrator. Should a reasonable no-spray agreement be offered to a municipality and an agreement is not reached within 90 days, the entity seeking to control the vegetation may apply its choice of pesticides/herbicides.

Resolve establishing a special commission to study the effects of coastal and ocean acidification and its existing and potential effects on species that are commercially harvested and grown along the Massachusetts coast (Resolve S.410) This commission is established to identify the actual and potential effects of coastal and ocean acidification on commercially valuable marine species, identify the scientific data and knowledge gaps that may hinder the Commonwealth’s ability to craft policy and other responses to coastal and ocean acidification, and prioritize the strategies for filling those gaps to provide policies and tools to respond to the effects of coastal and ocean acidification on commercially important fisheries and the commonwealth’s shellfish aquaculture industry.

An Act prohibiting the use of mobile gear in certain waters off the coast of the town of Nantucket (S.411): This bill would extend the same protections to the coastal waters of Nantucket which apply to most of the coastal waters in Massachusetts. Specifically, this bill would prohibit mobile gear fishing within three nautical miles of Nantucket’s coastline from May 1 to October 31.