Everybody's movement: environmental justice across New England.

• Position: Cover story

East Boston, a neighborhood surrounded by Route 1, I-90 and the airport, has been known more for its tankers than terns, more for its pollution than for its piping plovers. One of Boston's most ethnically diverse neighborhoods, East Boston is also one with limited access to its extensive waterfront, and one with a large number of hazardous waste sites. Thanks to organizations like Chelsea Creek Action Group iCCAGl, that has begun to change. In 1998, under pressure from the community, the Hess Corporation removed ten petroleum tanks from the banks of the Chelsea Creek - tanks that had been leaking into the soil and water for some time - leaving an open space in a community that once had one of the lowest rates of green space per capita in the region. However, the community continues to preserve the green space despite a lack of commitment by public officials.

"When you look at it, the land looks very natural," said John Walkey, an East Boston resident who used to work for NOAH, a multi-service non-profit community development corporation serving East Boston. "It's been filling in with cattails, and there are a lot of birds in the area. But if you dig down you will find stilt more contaminants under there."

The activities in East Boston are one example of the environmental justice (EJ) movement, an outgrowth of the civil rights and environmental movements. In September of 1982, dump trucks carrying 6,000 truckloads of soil laced with toxic PCBs hired by the state government rolled into Warren County, North Carolina - a rural, poor, mostly black town. Warren County residents organized to stop the dumping, at times sitting down in the road to bar the trucks' passage, marking one of the first times environmental protection and freedom from disproportionate exposure to toxins was framed as a civil right.

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Since then, the movement's objectives, as described by Robert "Bob" Butlard, known as the father of EJ - to "incorporate other social movements that seek to eliminate harmful practices ... in housing, land use, industrial planning, health care, and sanitation services" - have been codified in state and federal Laws. However, the ex-isting laws leave much to be desired and many of the original, systemic inequalities remain. Remedying those inequalities is a key focus of CLF's mission: to protect New England's environment for the benefit of all people.

WATER: MYSTIC & CHARLES RIVER

The laws that govern our nation's waterways...