Touring Our Backyard

For the fourth year in a row, students from Renaissance College at the University of New Brunswick and students from the Department of Geography at Salem State College came together for a common experience. This year it was Salem's turn to host a visit for our Canadian colleagues. And this year, our group was taken on an Environmental Justice tour of Chelsea, Massachusetts. Roseann Bongiovanni, Chelsea City Councilor and Associate Executive Director of The Chelsea Collaborative, acted as our guide and host.

Chelsea is less than 15 miles from Salem, but it might as well be on the other side of the country. Chelsea is a small city - only 1.8 square miles - but this small city shoulders a heavy burden for the region.

Chelsea is host to over 70% of New England's heating fuel, 100% of the jet fuel for nearby Logan International Airport, a literal (uncovered) mountain of road salt for over 200 New England cities and towns, oil storage tanks holding 22 billion gallons of oil, and countless other environmental insults. Chelsea is a lower income community with a large population of immigrants and minorities. The concentration of environmental burdens and the lower socioeconomic status of its residents are not random coincidence. This is a pattern repeated throughout the country.

Roseann led our busload of 40 students and faculty throughout the city while she narrated about the social and environmental challenges that this small city and its residents have faced, today and in the past. But it hasn't been all woe and disappointment. In fact, Chelsea residents have been increasingly active in taking control of their city. The Chelsea Collaborative has organized the community to demand more responsible behavior by its corporate neighbors, and pushed for fairer treatment by those who would otherwise take advantage.

Last year, Energy Management Inc. (EMI) proposed the construction of a diesel-fired peaking power plant in Chelsea - across the street from the Burke Elementary School complex which houses four schools and more than 1,300 students. Aside from insult, the irony/hypocrisy of this proposal is that EMI has simultaneously been struggling to locate the nation's first offshore wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod and Nantucket. While the nation's wealthiest (e.g., Kennedys) have raged against the installation of renewable, clean energy, Chelsea gets an old-fashioned fossil-fueled power plant. However, Chelsea residents did not take this lying down. After months of aggressive and strategic organizing and demonstrating, EMI was forced to withdraw its proposal (see "Power Plant Withdraws, City Cheers," Boston Globe 11/18/2007).

While Chelsea remains a largely industrial and working class city, changes are afoot. Roseann arranged for our group to visit the Forbes Park project (still under construction). Blair, the project developer, conducted this leg of our tour. Forbes Park will be a 'green' loft community built atop what used to be an old lithograph factory. Complete with its own wind turbine, restored marshlands, and naturally insulated lofts (no need for air conditioning), it promises to introduce a new level of sustainable development. Of course, these lofts will be largely out of reach for most Chelsea residents - prices beginning in the $300,000 range. Students picked up on this issue fairly quickly.

When the tour was complete, we headed back to Salem to regroup and discuss what we had experienced. Students had been previously assigned to various stakeholder groups (i.e., developers, government officials, community residents, etc.) and were asked to consider Chelsea's issues from their respective positions. The discussion was interesting - students picked out the complicated, seemingly intractable issues facing the city. However, finding problems is always easier than finding solutions. It's important to remember that despite numerous obstacles, residents have battled the odds and made progress. This is one of the things that made our tour particularly powerful - not just an exposure to depressing problems in a marginalized community, but a tour of an ongoing project to make things better.