Health and Environment:
ACE- Alternatives for Community and Environment
ACE builds the power of communities of color and lower income communities in New England to eradicate environmental racism and classism and achieve environmental justice. We believe that everyone has the right to a healthy environment and to be decision-makers in issues affecting our communities. Systemic change means moving beyond solving problems one by one to eliminating the root causes of environmental injustice. ACE is anchoring a movement of people who have been excluded from decision-making to confront power directly and demand fundamental changes in the rules of the game, so together we can achieve our right to a healthy environment.
Most recently Ace and Right to the City Partnered Sept. 30th-Oct 1st Boston Unites to Take Back Our City
Accomplishments
- ACE helped members of the Chelsea community successfully oppose a diesel power plant in their community. In November 2007, Chelsea Energy, LLC withdrew its plans to construct a diesel-burning power plant next to the only elementary school complex in the city because of strong, organized community resistance on behalf of Chelsea residents and Chelsea Green Space. The 250 megawatt plant would have emitted significant amounts of diesel exhaust and particulate matter, posing a health risk to the community and especially those children attending school next door.
- ACE and its partners push Massachusetts to enact its first Environmental Justice Policy. After more than 2 years of pressure from ACE and its partners, Secretary Of Environment Robert Durand passed an Environmental Justice Policy in October 2002. This policy reorients all of the state’s environmental agencies to increase outreach, involvement, and resources to environmental justice communities and provides for heightened scrutiny in environmental impact reviews.
- ACE and its partners win 100 clean fuel buses in regional transportation plan. In March 2002, ACE and its more than 50 coalition partners in On the Move coalition partners publicly launched a Transportation Justice and Livable Communities agenda and forced the regional transportation planning body to add a $40 million project for 100 additional clean fuel buses in its 25-year plan.
- ACE youth force cleanup of “mountain” of asbestos and lead-laden dirt in Roxbury. In late 2001, ACE’s youth interns undertook a campaign to clean up a lot that contained a 10-foot high mound of uncovered dirt that was laden with asbestos and lead. The youth worked with residents of the neighboring housing development and state environmental officials to force the responsible party, a construction firm, to remove the contaminated dirt at a cost of &frac;12 million dollars.
- ACE and its community partners successfully organize for new regulations solid-waste related facilities. In December 1999, the Boston Public Health Commission approved strict regulations on dumpster storage lots, junkyards, and recycling facilities. Neighborhood groups have worked for years to residents from health code violations, rodent infestations, and hazardous waste releases from these facilities.
- ACE helps get air monitoring station in Dudley Square. ACE and its partners successfully persuaded the MA Department of Environmental Protection to install a comprehensive air monitoring station in the Dudley Square area. After years of raising awareness of high asthma rates and the dangers of diesel bus and truck exhaust, residents will now have a new tool in their fight for environmental justice. ACE’s youth interns are helping to build 24-hour access to the data from this monitoring site through a telephone hotline and website.
- ACE helps defeat asphalt plant. Working with the Coalition Against the Asphalt Plant, a coalition of residents from Roxbury, Dorchester, South Boston, and South End, ACE helped defeat a proposed asphalt plant, which would have contributed more pollution to an area already afflicted with poor public health.
