1999 Boston Grants Recipients

Alternatives for Community & Environment, Inc. (ACE)
Smart (Re)Development for Roxbury
$20,000

ACE works with low-income communities and communities of color throughout Massachusetts to solve environmental and public health problems and build environmental leadership. This project was designed to bring together ACE's neighborhood partners to create strategies to integrate transportation, economic, and environmental concerns into proposed developments. Funding supports development of strategies for educating residents about the current development process, ensuring that resident concerns will be addressed during the development planning and review process, and assessing the cumulative impacts of proposed projects.

Measures of Success: Improvements to development projects that provide benefits to the community. New awareness and partnerships among Roxbury resident organizations concerned with development, land-use, and environment. Development of a model framework for judging proposed development and application of model to two specific development proposals.

Project Partners: Dudley Street Neighborhood Program, Egleston Square Neighborhood Association, and Tellus Institute

Contact: Penn Loh, Alternatives for Community and Environment, Inc., 2343 Washington Street, 2nd Fl., Roxbury, MA 02119 Tel: (617) 442-3343 x 24 Fax: (617) 442-2425

This Livable Communities project was funded to support a Community Working Group and a Technical Advisory Committee that would convene on a regular basis to discus development issues and work to educate residents and neighborhood groups on the community development process. The objectives of the group were to reduce traffic congestion and automobile use, encourage low-pollution forms of transportation, generate living wage jobs for local residents and opportunities for locally owned businesses, preserve and increase affordable housing, and preserve and enhance urban green space. The Group focused on developing smart-growth strategies for 2-4 future development sites in Roxbury and convened a neighborhood summit on livability to bring together neighborhood organizations from around Boston.

Measures of Success: Creation of a Community Working Group to discuss and support alternatives for community development consistent with Livable Community goals; convene summit of community organizations for 40 participants; conduct educational workshops for residents; engage decision makers in discussion about community goals.

Project Partners: ACE, Dudley Street Neighborhood Program, Egleston Square Neighborhood Association, Project RIGHT

Contact: Penn Loh, Alternatives for Community and Environment, Inc., 2343 Washington Street, 2nd Fl., Roxbury, MA 02119 Tel: (617) 442-3343 x 24 Fax: (617) 442-2425

Chelsea Green Space and Recreation Committee is a community group whose goal is to develop a citywide constituency to protect and expand open space and improve Chelsea's parks and environment. Mill Creek Restoration 2000 is a project focusing on the revitalization of Chelsea's last remaining salt marsh. This project will involve residents in a community visioning process that will be presented to the City's Planning and Development Department to be included in all plans for redevelopment and restoration of Mill Creek and the adjacent commercial area, Parkway Plaza. In a city marred by fifty-two 21E hazardous waste sites, and no access to its own waterfront, the Project aims to produce a model recreational area and natural resource for its residents.

Measures of Success: Involvement of residents in redevelopment of the Mill Creek estuary through a planning and visioning phase for the renovations to the waterfront land; residents will learn the importance of estuaries and become informed of the permitting process for redevelopment; residents develop a sense of ownership for the estuary; development of a model waterfront development that demonstrates the link between natural resources and sustainable economic development.

Project Partners: Conservation Law Foundation, Massachusetts Riverways Program, Campaign for the Water's Edge, Chelsea Creek Action Group, City of Chelsea Planning and Development Department, Chelsea Summer Environmental Youth Crew, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Boys & Girls Club

Contact: Roseann Bongiovanni/Gladys Vega, Chelsea Green Space and Recreation Committee, 300 Broadway Chelsea, MA 02150 Tel: (617) 889-6080 Fax: (617) 889-0559 E-mail:chelcollab@shore.net

The City of Boston will implement a pilot project to audit and train residents and employees of the Boston Housing Authority in integrated pest management techniques. IPM, or integrated pest management, is the "modern" technique of implementing two or more control strategies in the suppression of pests. IPM techniques reduce reliance on pesticides and provide more permanent resolution to pest problems by eliminating accessibility and upgrading sanitation and maintenance of facilities. This will be achieved and maintained by auditing and monitoring the existing systems for the presence of pests, investigating alternative methods including the involvement and training of staff and residents, the strategic but limited use of pesticides, and evaluation and adjustment to the program.

Measures of Success: Residents will be trained in IPM principles and implementation. A statistical database will be assembled with the assistance of monitors to track the types, location and frequency of pests, at five or more sites.

Project Partners: Boston Housing Authority, Harvard University School of Public Health, Boston University School of Medicine

Contact: Bryan Glascock, City of Boston, City Hall, Room 805, Boston, MA 02201 Tel: (617) 635-4416 Fax: (617) 635-3435

The Action Against Asthma project is an education, community organizing, and coalition building Program to improve the health of public housing residents. The primary task of the project is to train public housing residents to identify and create strategies to address environmental justice issues tied to health, the environment, and housing. The program teaches residents intervention techniques to decrease their families exposure to asthma triggers. Action Against Asthma also builds the leadership skills of residents so that they can share the information they have learned with other residents. The program builds the public housing community's capacity to identify and organize to remediate environmental health issues. Action Against Asthma unites public residents from different areas of the city and professions in the public health , environmental, and medical fields to create viable strategies to improve housing conditions, and therefore improve health, in Boston's public housing communities.

Measures of Success: Expand to a new public housing development; recruit and train a minimum of five residents as Asthma Health Advocates (AHAs); provide training to fifteen households on managing asthma; sponsor community meetings and events to educate the residents as to the links between the environment and health; and production of a asthma education and community response video in collaboration with partners.

Project Partners: Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston Urban Asthma Coalition, Franklin Hill Tenant Task Force

Contact: Patricia Stasco, Committee for Boston Public Housing, 100 Terrace Street, Suite B, Roxbury, MA 02119 Tel: (617) 427-3556 x 207 Fax: (617) 442-6139

The Community Risk Assessment Project is a unique project designed to address the concerns of East Boston and Chelsea residents, in particular concerns of residents living along Chelsea Creek. A survey will be conducted in the community to identify issues of concern, and a Resident Advisory Committee will set environmental, public health, and quality of life priorities to be addressed. A Technical Advising Committee will help gather, analyze and evaluate existing data. The issues selected are: water quality, air quality, open/green space, asthma, traffic, and noise. The Community Risk Assessment brings together community groups, academia, and different levels of government to collect and share detailed information on these issues ans to provide residents with the tools to compare risk factors in the community. Information from the project will be used to supplement existing efforts to restore and revitalize the environment and improve public health in the Cheslea Creek to benefit local residents.

Measures of Success: Assess community-identified risk and hazards of environmental, public health and social issues on the health of residents; develop multi-culturally competent channels of communication to create public awareness of those pollutants; implement strategies to address the hazards.

Project Partners: Chelsea Human Services Collaborative, Chelsea Creek Action Group, Chelsea Green Space and Recreation Committee, Neighborhood of Affordable Housing, Greater Boston Urban Resources Partnership, East Boston Ecumenical Community Council

Contact: Susan Loucks, Neighborhood of Affordable Housing, 22 Paris Street, East Boston, MA 02128 Tel: 617-569-0059 x14

The Food Project began in 1991 with the vision of bringing diverse young people together to grow and distribute food for the hungry and in the process, develop leadership in Boston-area youth. Since 1995, the Food Project has been selling its freshly-harvested organic produce at its farmers' market in the Dudley Street Neighborhood in Roxbury. Staffed by stipend-supported youth program participants, this urban farmers' market provides low-cost, healthy, and fresh food to neighborhood residents, and in the process remediates formerly vacant urban land, educates citizens about the importance of sustainable urban agriculture, and develops job skills and leadership capacity in local youth. In 1999 the Food Project will pilot a second urban farmer's market, thereby increasing the impact of this Program.

Measures of Success: The second Urban Farmers' Market will pilot an education, sale, and distribution effort for organic alternatives to pest control, will promote community-based economic development, and will respond to locally-articulated objectives for the market.

Project Partners: Dudley Street Neighborhood Program, UMass Extension School, Department of Food and Agriculture, City Fresh Catering

Contact: Patricia Gray, The Food Project, P.O. Box 705, Lincoln, MA 01773 Tel: (781) 259-8621 x 15 Fax: (781) 259-9659

The Greater Boston Urban Resources Partnership (GB-URP) is a coalition of community organizations, businesses and agencies that works to increase urban environmental awareness, connect public, private, and non-profit technical resources to community groups, and assist communities in addressing social, economic, and environmental concerns. The goal of this project is to allow the GB-URP to develop the programmatic infrastructure to gather additional financial and technical resources for the benefit of the region's community groups.

Measures of Success: Document delivery of financial and technical assistance; increase and diversify funds by 30 percent.

Project Partners: United States Department of Agriculture, The BSC Group

Contact: Ali Noorani, City of Boston, Boston City Hall, Room 805, Boston, MA 02201
Tel: (617) 635-2518 Fax: (617) 635-3435

The Mass Riverways Urban Program, housed in the Mass Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Environmental Law Enforcement, works to revitalize urban river fronts and to address the interests of city neighborhoods near rivers. This year the Riverways Urban Rivers Program will move into Phase 2 of the Mill Creek Project begun last year to work with community organizations and municipalities to revitalize Mill Creek and Chelsea Creek by developing a vision and plan of action for this area by helping build a strong resident group to organize community activities in the creek area. In Phase 2, the Riverways Urban Program will work with its partners to implement a pilot salt marsh restoration project which will replace a portion of the phragmites with native marsh grass, create a community vision for this area and ensure redevelopment proposals reflect the community's vision and include needed green space and sustainable economic development.

Measures of Success: Development of a community vision for access to and uses of the Mill Creek; implementation of this vision as the basis for planning and redevelopment in this area; development and support of a strong resident group interested in the Mill Creek; initiation of a pilot restoration site designed and implemented in collaboration with local and youth groups; training of youth groups and local residents to assess the health of the marsh; provision of technical assistance and information on permitting requirements (for redevelopment and other waterfront uses) and on the 21-E process; provision of information on potential funding sources and other resources for brownfields redevelopment and open space acquisition.

Project Partners: Chelsea Green Space and Recreation Committee, Watershed Institute, Conservation Law Foundation, National Park Service

Contact: Anne Livingston, Mass Riverways Programs, 100 Cambridge Street, Room 1901, Boston MA 02202 Tel:(617) 727-1614 x 348 E-mail: Anne.Livingston@state.ma.us

ROCA is a multicultural, youth, family, and community development organization located in the cities of Chelsea and Revere, Massachusetts. This project will organize and mobilize a movement of citizens in the cities of Revere and Chelsea who are committed to the development of wetland conservation, education, and collaborative programming to address wetland restoration and preservation in the areas of the Rumney Marsh in Revers, and the Mill Creek in Chelsea. Utilizing the energy and enthusiasm of ten full-time Youth STAR members between the ages of 16 and 24, the project will design wetland education workshops and community forums to target the greater populations of Chelsea and Revere; create and provide wetland activities and education projects for elementary and middle school age children from both cities; design and implement outreach campaigns targeting wetland perimeter households; and recruit community members to join Youth STAR in wetland stewardship and restoration activities.

Measures of Success: Creation of a team of 10 youth environmentalists; creating dialogue with residents for monitoring illegal shoreline dumping; development of outreach materials; community meetings; surveys of Mill Creek and Rumney Marsh (shoreline, storm drain, species, and pipeline); wetland restoration.

Project Partners: Friends of Rumney Marsh, Chelsea Green Space Committee, Cities of Revere and Chelsea, Urban Riverways, Saugus River Watershed, Metropolitan District Commission

Contact: Cindy J. Davenport, Project Director, Youth STAR Wetland Restoration Project
Tel: (617) 889-5210 x 202 Fax: (617) 889-2145 E-mail: cindy@roca.tiac.net

Second Nature, Inc., is a Boston-based national nonprofit organization with a mission to help higher
education institutions and their local community expand their efforts to make environmentally sustainable action a foundation of learning and practice. This project is a move to action which looks towards planning and initial implementation steps for the long term goal of sustainable economic development. Goals include: promoting eco-industrial development (EID) in Boston through education to community residents, business leaders and other stakeholders; making the case for local manufacturing and industry clusters in Boston; sustainable economic development project support; the development of an integrated sustainable planning process with UMass Boston; and collaborative networking and fundraising to support CDC efforts. This project primarily targets three communities in Boston: a low to moderate income Chinese-speaking neighborhood, the low-income, minority Mission Hill neighborhood near the hospital district, and an industrial mixed ethnic community in South Boston that is the site of a high technology incubator.

Measures of Success: EID research and information exchange; four stakeholder information sharing meetings on EID & identification of new partners and participants; work with four business contacts to explore waste exchanges; publication of project and success stories through multimedia outreach; hiring of consultant to conduct research on status of manufacturing in the city of Boston; three roundtables to support community EID projects.

Project Partners: Sustainable Boston, Boston Coalition for Sustainable Development, Asian CDC, City of Boston, Boston Edison Company

Contact: Jeffrey Kunz, Second Nature Inc., 44 Bromfield Street 5th Floor, Boston MA 02108
Tel: (617) 292-7771 x 112 Fax: (617) 635-0383
E-mail: jkunz@2nature.org