Letter from the president.

For nearly 50 years, CLF has been at the vanguard of legal and policy solutions to New England's most pressing environmental challenges. Last year was no exception, as we declared victory in two of our long-fought, complex cases: Vermont Yankee, one of the nation's oldest nuclear power plants, and Brayton Point, New England's largest coal-fired power plant, both announced their retirement.

In 2013, we also restored alewives to Maine's St. Croix River, funded public transportation in Massachusetts, gained protections for New Hampshire's Great Bay, and kick-started plans to protect Rhode Island's coast and communities from storms and sea level rise.

We had much to celebrate all across New England. But there is still much more to do.

As you'll read in this issue of Conservation Matters, our work often gets done case by case, community by community. By design, however, it all adds up to a whole greater than the sum of its parts, as we spread local solutions across our region and create transformative change throughout New England.

For example, our pursuit of industrial polluters contaminating our waterways benefits the neighborhoods where for decades these facilities have...