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News :: Environment |
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Chelsea and Low Income Communities Fight Power Plant, Against Environmental Injustice |
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by Sofia Jarrin
Email: sofiajt (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified!) |
06 Mar 2007
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In an astounding display of solidarity, community members from Roxbury, Dorchester, Chelsea, East Boston and their local government officials gathered at Chelsea High School last week to speak out against plans to build a diesel power plant in Chelsea. Standing before the Energy Facilities Siting Board, a board known for historically approving every siting permit request presented before them, people bitterly complained about Energy Management Inc.’s (EMI) railroading strategy to build the diesel plant a mere 250 yards from Chelsea’s only elementary school. |
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(Photos by Jonathan McIntosh: http://capedmaskedandarmed.com)
“The residents started coming out in droves, basically saying that they were opposed to the power plant, contacting their state legislator and city councilors,” said Rossane Bongiovanni, president of Chelsea’s City Council. “The City Council decided to take action and say, we don’t want this here, don’t send your proposal because we don’t want you in Chelsea.” Yet, Energy Management Inc.—the same company heralded for their plans to stage a wind power project off Cape Cod—decided to circumvent local authorities by presenting their proposal directly to the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) office, and therefore obtain a local zoning waiver at the state levels. “In essence, the city of Chelsea would have almost no say on this power plant if it wasn’t for these public hearings,” said Bongiovanni.
“I take great offense, quite honestly, great offense to the fact that somebody would come and try to propose or alleviate the city of Chelsea’s authority in this decision. We represent the people, we live here,” said Ron Morgese, District 8 Chelsea City Councilor.
“Not to be snide to the kind folks who are proposing this project but they indicated to us that they didn’t want to go forward with this if this didn’t have community support,” said Jarrett Barrios, state senator for Chelsea, “They had nine months to get to me, anybody, someone in the city of Chelsea who supports this project. I have had over 500 of my constituents oppose this and not a single resident, not a single resident from the city of Chelsea called me in support of this project.”
Barrios added that contrary to the company’s assertions, the fact that the power plant would run on diesel instead of natural gas would make it one of the dirtiest options for energy production in Chelsea, adding 37 tons of particulate matter per year to its atmosphere. Chelsea already is one of the dirtiest communities in regards to particulate matter in the United States, being the highest impacted community in Suffolk county. “What does that mean? That means that this is the absolutely worst place to put a diesel power facility. This is the absolutely worst place!” said the Senator.
Residents in Chelsea suffer statistically higher rates of hospitalization for asthma, asthma-related disease stroke, and other cardiovascular diseases than all cities and towns in Massachusetts as a whole. What community organizers have emphasized is that plans to build the diesel power plant in Chelsea is not only based on the assumption that its industrial past makes it a “suitable” place for continued abuse, but that there is an obvious racial and social class gauge developers use when deciding where to build environmentally clean or dirty projects.
“Every neighborhood in Chelsea is an environmental justice community—the only city in the state so designated,” reads an ACE and Chelsea Green Space report on the power plant. The Executive Office of Environmental Affairs (EOEA) designated as environmental justice communities those where the median annual income is at or below 65% of the state average, or where at least 25% of the residents are people of color, foreign born, or lack proficiency in English. Half of Chelsea’s population is Latino with a sizeable numbers of whites, blacks, Asians and refugees from Bosnia and Somalia.
Alternative for Community Environment, based in Roxbury, partnered with Chelsea Green Space to fight environmental injustices such as EMI’s plans to build the diesel power plant. Together they have corroborated that low income and minority communities suffer disproportionate environmental burdens and are often sites of the state’s most contaminated and abandoned hazardous waste sites and large sources of air emissions. For years now, Roxbury has been fighting federal plans to construct a Level 4 biodefense lab in their town and for the dismantling of their biggest air pollutant, a bus transportation depot. Chelsea has 90 hazardous waste sites per square mile, three large oil tank farms, a tannery (holding animal skins from slaughter houses stored on Chelsea’s waterfront), and many other production businesses.
However, these and other impacted neighborhoods have great hopes about leaving their industrial history behind to become residential areas through environmental remediation. The Chelsea Creek Action Group (CCAG) and Urban Ecology Institute partnership’s have done so, for example, by building East Boston’s first public park along Chelsea Creek on a contaminated site that was closed to the public. They are also leading the restoration of Mill Creek’s endangered salt marsh. Chelsea Green Space, the oldest community based coalition within the Chelsea Collaborative, was founded in 1994 to protect and expand open green spaces in Chelsea and restore their waterfront.
“For many years the city has been characterized as a low income, immigrant city with a poor school system, high crimes, and comments like, who wants to live in Chelsea? Or why do you live in Chelsea? We always get the brunt of the jokes. Is it because of the way the city is, the people who live in the city? Or is it because of what is brought to the city, what the residents are faced with on a daily basis?” said Marilyn Vega-Torres, District 6 City Councilor. “Our community is burdened enough with other companies using our city as a dumping ground.”
The Energy Facilities Siting Board is set to vote on the proposal later this month. |
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See also:
http://www.chelseacollab.org/index.html
http://www.ace-ej.org/reep
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This work licensed under a
Creative Commons license. |
