Flyer about Tree Planting Workshop on April 8, 2008. . . . read more – 87 reads

Written testimony to the Joint Committee on the Judiciary in favor of House Bill 2235, An Act Further Protecting Civil Rights . . . read more – 104 reads

"I feel like the community and a number of elected officials sent a very clear message that no matter what that power plant proposal looked like, we just didn't want it in Chelsea," said City Council president Roseann Bongiovanni. "There were a lot of environmental organizations that were standing with Chelsea, saying that the air in Chelsea is already very polluted and we don't need another source of air pollution in the city. This is a huge victory." . . . read more – 326 reads

In a notice filed with the state Energy Facilities Siting Board, lawyers for Chelsea Energy LLC, a subsidiary of Gordon's Energy Management Inc., like Cape Winds Associates LLC, said the company "no longer intends to develop the project at the proposed site in Chelsea" and withdrew its applications for approval. [...] Eugene B. Benson - counsel for Alternatives for Community and Environment, a group that focuses on battling pollution in poor and minority neighborhoods - said, "This victory by an environmental justice community is a victory for equity and fairness." . . . read more – 247 reads

To counter the statement that the oil storage tanks can be reactivated, Eugene Benson -- a lawyer with the organization Alternatives for Community & Environment, representing the local nonprofit group Chelsea Collaborative -- quoted a Chelsea zoning ordinance that states that a nonconforming use or structure that has been abandoned or unused for at least two years no longer has protected status. . . . read more – 351 reads

McDonald also said that during the emergency, firefighters in hazmat suits first checked the containers holding the hazardous materials and found them to be intact. Though the incident proved to be minor, community members opposed to the building of the BioLab are still concerned. “This is another example of how things go wrong in laboratories. Maybe this time the biological agents were locked in a freezer, but maybe next time they’ll be out in the lab, being experimented with when people needed to evacuate,” said Gene Benson, legal counsel for Alternatives for Community and Environment, a Roxbury-based environmental justice advocacy group. . . . read more – 330 reads

Gene Benson, staff attorney for Alternatives for Community and Environment, notes that Durand’s 2002 EJ directive exempted power plants, so even if the Patrick administration wanted to dust it off, it still couldn’t be used to block the Chelsea plant. Barrios’s bill would mandate that the plant’s developers directly offset the pollutants their plant would emit, or not build their plant at all. “You have to ask how you’re going to mitigate the health impact,” Benson says. “If you can’t figure that out, maybe you should be building a different type of plant, or maybe the plant shouldn’t be there at all. It’s not a barrier to do things that are clean, but if you’re going to add pollution and have a significant health impact, it’s right to take a look at it.” . . . read more – 409 reads

Eugene Benson, a member of a Roxbury-based organization called Alternatives for Community and the Environment, urged Allston-Brighton residents to join forces with other Boston neighborhood groups to support a City Council petition to create a separate planning department that would give people who live in the neighborhoods more say, while taking the planning function out of the BRA. “We just think there has to be a citywide solution, because what’s happening in your neighborhood is actually happening in a lot of neighborhoods around the city,” Benson said, inviting people to attend the next meeting of a group called “Whose Boston Is it?”, scheduled to take place on March 1 at 5:30 p.m. in a to-be-determined location in Chinatown. “It’s going to take a lot of support from the entire city to make this happen because there’ll be a lot of powerful forces against it [the proposal to take the planning function out of the BRA], including the mayor,” he said. . . . read more – 295 reads

Despite the presence of a couple of high-level staffers who used to toil at Massport, maybe your liaison folks can turn a sympathetic ear to the East Boston and Winthrop residents who oppose Massport’s plans to build a taxiway. Given your campaign promise to put more cops on the streets, maybe your liaison people can deliver same to Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis, who wants to beef up community policing, and to places like Chelsea, Revere and Lynn, where youth gangs roam hither and yon. Speaking of Chelsea, one hopes that the liaison staffers will help neighborhood people there deal with yet another power plant proposal, as if that city didn’t have enough facilities that exist for the great and general good, enough road salt, for example, to melt a couple of glaciers faster than global warming. Perhaps your good offices could ride herd on Harvard to be sensitive to Allston and Brighton as the university clones itself in those neighborhoods. . . . read more – 325 reads

These are the comments of the Chelsea Green Space and Recreation Committee (Chelsea Green Space) on the Expanded Environmental Notification Form (EENF) for the proposed Chelsea Peak Energy Facility (diesel power plant). Alternatives for Community & Environment (ACE) is assisting Chelsea Green Space in submitting these comments. . . . read more – 561 reads