New England Town Lives in Fear of ‘Electrical Highway’

It’s a familiar scene in New England: an old mill town with massive brick buildings that once housed wool spinners and cotton looms, clean streets and tidy houses.

But in Millbury, there’s also lots of power. The town, in central Massachusetts near Worcester, is the central junction on an electrical highway made up of 23 lines, carrying millions of volts of electricity to cities across the Northeast.

In recent years, the amount of electricity has increased. Local residents who once paid little mind to the wires over their heads now say Millbury is a scary place to live for its 5,000 residents.

Even as recently as the mid-1980s, when New England Power Service Co. wanted to string a new line through town, no one objected. But lately several studies have questioned whether people living so close to so much electricity have increased health risks. People have begun wondering about their headaches, troubled pregnancies and unexplained illnesses.

“My family has health problems. My neighbors have health problems,” said Andree Belisle, a lifelong resident of Millbury. “There are a lot of dogs around with lymphomas. We’re scared.”

Some studies point to the power lines overhead and the EMFs--electromagnetic fields--they emit.

Two years ago, the town tried to reduce the fear by imposing limits on the power company. It passed an ordinance, the first of its kind in Massachusetts, limiting EMF exposure along the power lines.

The law was short-lived. Within two months, the board of selectmen received a letter from the state attorney general’s office saying the town had no authority to regulate power companies.

Only the state--through the Department of Public Utilities--can regulate the electric company. But no policy exists in Massachusetts addressing health concerns over exposure to EMFs.

The reason is simple. According to DPU Commissioner Kenneth Gordon, there is no conclusive evidence that power lines pose any health threats.

But the state and New England Power both have issued pamphlets on what is known about the effects of electricity on people’s health.

“We’re not trying to hide anything from anybody,” said Charlie Moser, director of retail engineering at Massachusetts Electric Co., a subsidiary of New England Electric, which owns New England Power. “If someone wants a copy of a study, and we can get it, we’ll give it to them.”

But the electric company cannot afford to act on the limited information available, Moser said, citing conflicting studies done in Sweden and Denmark. Although power lines can be rigged differently to reduce EMF emissions, doing so to the thousands of miles of transmission lines in the state would cost too much and guarantee too little, he said.

“The science is nowhere near making the same statements about field exposure as cigarette smoke exposure,” Moser said. “It’s not a question of EMF exposure (causing) disease and are you going to get it. The question is does field exposure cause anything? Some studies say yes; some studies say no.”

In Millbury, people like James and Diane McCorison want the power cut.

“We worked so hard for 10 years to get our dream home, then boom: The story comes out about the danger of power lines,” Diane McCorison said.

Four years ago, the couple bought a split-level house, with an unfinished master bedroom and bath, at a bargain price. They finished the upstairs and cellar, landscaped the 3/4-acre plot and installed an in-ground swimming pool.

Then the McCorisons started to hear reports of possible risks posed by the power lines that run a stone’s throw from their home. They wanted to move, but learned their home was worth no more than when they bought it.

“What we decided is to wait for something to tell us if power lines are really dangerous,” the mother of two sighed. “We do have worries, but what can you do? There’s nothing certain in life.”

The Belisle family is not content to wait for answers, though.

Alexander and Andree Belisle have lived 30 feet from a 115-kilovolt transmission line for 20 years. Their home is shaded by pine and oak that nearly block the view of the half-dozen trestles supporting power lines running to a substation 150 feet down the street.

Health problems abound in their home.

Belisle suffers from chronic migraines. His wife had a miscarriage, and doctors have yet to say why her throat constricts whenever she is home. Their son was born with two urethras. Their daughter developed cysts. The dog died of cancer.

They blame EMFs.

“We would love to move. We’d do it in two minutes if we thought we could sell,” said Belisle. “But what do you do, sell to someone else and pass along the problem to them? Maybe kill them?”

Belisle, publisher of the weekly Millbury-Sutton Chronicle and an English professor at Becker College in Worcester, chairs the town’s Electromagnetic Radiation Hazards Study Commission.

The committee has taken its fight to Boston in the form of three bills: one to fund an EMF study, a second to issue health warnings to buyers of homes within 1,000 feet of power lines and a third to require power companies to set aside funds to correct any EMF-related problems.

Their reception at the Statehouse was disheartening, the Belisles say.

“We were treated rudely, ignored,” Andree Belisle said.

“We were treated as if this were an annoying lark,” her husband said.

Little action is expected on the EMF bills, which remain in committees on Beacon Hill. Nor is the state preparing its own EMF policies, Gordon said. But the DPU chief said he is putting together an advisory committee of experts to advise his agency.