CLF, communities celebrate major environmental justice victories.

Environmental justice communities in Greater Boston recently welcomed two significant victories with help from CLF's Healthy Communities and Environmental Justice Program.

In Chelsea, residents are breathing a little easier now that energy developers have scrapped plans to build a 250-megawatt diesel power plant next to an elementary school. The decision in November 2007 to withdraw the application for state approval came after months of opposition from environmental and community groups including the Chelsea Greenspace Committee, Alternatives for Community and Environment (ACE) and CLE State officials issued a certificate declaring the project "unlikely to receive approval," forcing the developer to abandon the application.

In Roxbury and the South End, residents applauded the findings of a blistering federal report that said the risk analysis prepared for the proposed BU Biolab was "not sound and credible" and ignored the potential consequences of deadly disease agents being released into the community. The panel's report came after staunch opposition from community residents, represented by CLF and Boston Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, who sued to halt construction in state and federal courts.

Both decisions are huge victories for the individual communities, CLF, and our allies who continue to send the message that polluters are unwelcome in communities that have long borne the burden of environmental pollution.