Winthrop’s families and its fire station felt new repercussions from the Town Council’s defiance of the state’s 3A housing law, losing an established town program for parents and their children, and a chance at state-funded geothermal power for downtown construction.

Town leaders acknowledged this past week that they have given up on the idea of including geothermal energy in the town’s new $38.5 million fire station project, citing financial limits after state officials blocked the potential of $865,000 in climate-related grant money.

Then the head of the Winthrop Parents Network said the program will close this month after 16 years of providing free education and assistance to children and their families, also citing the issue of state funding restrictions tied to the Town Council’s 3A fight.

“It’s with great sadness that I have to announce that the Winthrop Parents Network program will be ending on June 30th 2026,” the program’s coordinator, Anita Preble, said in a social media posting. “The grant from the Department of Early Education and Care was denied because the town is out of compliance with the MBTA Communities Law (aka 3A) passed in 2021.”

That announcement came a few days after Winthrop’s town manager, Tony Marino, said that geothermal energy – which is described by advocates as cheaper over the long term and less-polluting than conventional power sources – was rejected for the fire station because of what he cited as high construction costs and technological complexities.

Not happening

“Geothermal’s not happening,” Mr Marino said during a briefing with residents outside the construction site.

Winthrop has a Citizen’s Advisory Commission on Climate that suspended its work back in December, arguing it had run out of options for advancing necessary projects – such as drain and pipe replacement in areas of town threatened by rising water levels – after the Town Council repeatedly voted against 3A compliance.

Mr Marino had estimated in April that Winthrop has lost or been declared ineligible for some $2.5 million in state money because of the Town Council’s position on 3A. The state holds the constitutional right to set zoning rules, and the 3A law used that authority to generally require that towns around Boston expand their areas that allow multifamily housing.

“They’ve missed out on so many opportunities” for state financial support of town projects due to the 3A fight, Norman Hyett, a co-chair of the climate commission, said of the Winthrop Town Council.

Devastated parents

The Winthrop Parents Network operates out of space in the E.B. Newton School building. It provides young children and their families with programs that include early literacy, developmental screenings and parenting education. Its partners include the town’s public schools, private preschools and other public service agencies.

Ms Preble did not detail the program’s budget situation. But the network already had described itself as both growing and struggling financially, with recent effects that included reducing its numbers of available teachers and inaugurating new fundraising efforts.

Dozens of residents expressed concern over the loss of the program, with several describing Ms Preble’s announcement as devastating news. Ms Preble said in response that the program could seek state money if the Town Council resolves the 3A matter, but noted that the next opportunity for doing that would not come until 2028.

In the case of the fire station project, state officials have told their Winthrop counterparts that the 3A situation means the town is ineligible for grants of up to $865,000 for incorporating into the new building a geothermal system that would draw energy from the town’s own wastewater pipes.

Calculated savings

The apparent abandonment of geothermal energy for the fire station could have an especially long-term effect on Winthrop. A 2023 analysis by the architectural firm Short Elliott Hendrickson looking at two new fire stations in the state of Wisconsin – each slightly smaller than Winthrop’s planned 27,000-square-foot fire station – estimated their energy savings due to geothermal energy as $37,000 and $46,000 per year.

The Winthrop climate commission’s work included hosting a presentation last summer by Anne Wright, a co-founder of the Building Electrification Accelerator, a nonprofit promoter of decarbonization efforts in construction. Ms Wright endorsed the idea of including geothermal options in the new Winthrop fire station, especially given the rising repair and maintenance costs associated with the town’s natural gas pipelines – as well as their risks of explosion and leaks of methane, a cause of planetary warming far more potent than carbon dioxide.

Yet even before the state described Winthrop as ineligible for the geothermal energy grant, Ms Wright acknowledged the political difficulty of confronting natural gas’s familiarity to many Americans.

Mr Marino confirmed the town’s decision against the use of geothermal energy in response to a question Tuesday at the construction site event, which was held shortly after the old school building was torn down at the location and a few weeks before the new fire station construction work is expected to begin there.

Energy options

Geothermal energy refers to the extraction of heat from the Earth, often by pipes that are drilled into the ground and then circulated with water or other liquids, allowing the underground temperature difference to produce cooling, heating and energy generation for the buildings above them.

Mr Hyett and other local advocates were proposing the possibility of what they described as an even simpler version that would use pipes largely run in a horizontal direction to draw energy from the town’s own wastewater lines in the area, and potentially reach out past Donovan Beach to create heat exchange systems in ocean water. Such a system also could extend into the adjacent ice rink to trade heating and cooling needs, and extend power supplies into other nearby public and private buildings, Mr Hyett said.

Winthrop advocates of the idea were pursuing money from the state’s new Wastewater Energy Recovery program, which promised to begin awarding money this spring. The state grant allowed as much as $15,000 for assessment work, $100,000 for project design and $750,000 for construction. The horizontal system idea was discussed with state officials, who “told us we were in a good situation” with that option, before saying the town was ineligible for the associated grant money until the 3A situation gets resolved, Mr Hyett said.

“Winthrop is blessed – you could do geothermal from ocean water, we’re ideally located,” he said. “Geothermal is an amazing and endless source of whatever you need for energy.”