POWER PEOPLE, PROTECT COMMUNITIES
2025 UPDATE
We are stitching together a brighter future—one community and victory at a time. From Maine to Connecticut, every organizing campaign is another square in our growing quilt, woven together by collective action.
From day one, Slingshot works alongside communities to train local leaders, connect groups across states, and link them with legal, scientific, and public health allies. Together, we’re crafting a regional movement for justice.
Leaders with A Better Claremont hit the streets to mobilize their neighbors ahead of a public hearing
BUILDING A ZERO-WASTE FUTURE
In Claremont, NH, community leaders like Reb MacKenzie, Judith Koester, Katie Lajoie, and Nelia Sargent with A Better Claremont celebrated when the state denied a permit for a massive construction and demolition waste facility. The win was years in the making: neighbors built a broad coalition that included local businesses, packed hearings, and mobilized hundreds to speak out.
In New Bedford, MA, after six years of organizing, leaders Wendy Morrill and Tracy Wallace with South Coast Neighbors United won a major vote at the Board of Health rejecting what would have been the state's largest waste transfer station. Residents built lasting power by mobilizing hundreds of neighbors, shaping media coverage, and protecting New Bedford families from pollution and truck traffic in their neighborhoods. We're supporting residents as they continue to organize following developer Parallel Products recent appeal of the decision.
In the beautiful White Mountains of New Hampshire, the North Country Alliance for Balanced Change and their grassroots coalition, led by Wayne Morrison and Tom Tower, successfully urged regulators to deny Casella’s permit for a massive landfill near Forest Lake State Park. Since 2019, this dedicated group has organized neighbors and citizens across the state to oppose the project. Their efforts continue as the coalition advocates for statewide protections and a sustainable future for the environment and for all New Hampshire communities.
For decades, residents of Saugus, Lynn, and Revere, MA have lived beside one of the nation’s oldest incinerator and landfill complexes. Leaders Loretta LaCentra, Debra Panetta, and Peter Manoogian with the Alliance for Health and the Environment are demanding accountability from polluter WIN Waste. This fall, their organizing pushed state leaders to see the site for themselves, to better understand how to support the community's needs and maintain the 2028 timeline for the landfill to be capped.
This year, we also began working alongside residents Deb Berntsen, Rachel Fillion, and Valerie Moore in Berlin, NH, who formed ACT Berlin (Androscoggin Community for Transformation) to stop contaminated soil dumping on a closed landfill threatening residents' health and the Androscoggin River.
FIGHTING FOR WATER JUSTICE
In Brunswick, ME, after organizing for months, leaders Amy Self, Bruce Kantner, Ralph Keyes with Brunswick United for a Safe Environment won a unanimous town council vote opposing a proposal to truck 85,000 tons of PFAS-laden waste to Brunswick Landing, a neighborhood still reeling from last year’s devastating firefighting foam spill.
We need safe solutions for managing sludge, however bringing such high volumes of PFAS-laden waste to this neighborhood threatened to exacerbate contamination and deepen existing harm. Neighbors mobilized hundreds of community members to oppose the project and also secured removal of the remaining PFAS-laden firefighting foam from the former air base.
Community leaders with the National PFAS Contamination Coalition at retreat in Chicago
In May, we held a Leadership Team retreat in Chicago with the National PFAS Contamination Coalition, bringing together leaders from communities around the country to strategize about the future of our national PFAS work and oppose the Trump Administration's rollbacks to our hard-won clean drinking water protections.
TRANSFORMING OUR ENERGY SYSTEM
In Hartford, CT, where up to 12% of children suffer from asthma, residents are demanding the state replace the city’s aging fracked-gas heating plant with clean geothermal energy. Community leaders and groups like Sierra Club Connecticut, BLM860, and the Nonprofit Accountability Group are organizing to pressure Governor Lamont to choose healthy, renewable solutions over fossil fuels.
When Vermont Renewable Gas proposed an experimental biomass facility beside a daycare and regional hospital in Lyndonville, VT, community leaders organized to stop the project. Backed by Slingshot and 350VT, local leaders delivered a major blow to the project’s future when state regulators ruled it does not qualify as renewable energy—protecting Northeast Kingdom families and stopping a dangerous precedent from spreading across the region. VRG is still trying to plow ahead with the facility, and the community isn’t backing down from the fight.
In Maine, Brady-Anne Winn, Demi Kaeka, Richard Davis, Jim Stewart, and their neighbors sprang into action when they learned that the town of Wiscasset had signed a non-disclosure agreement with an unknown company to explore a hyperscale AI data center. Such a facility could consume millions of gallons of water daily, jack up electricity rates, pollute the environment, and disenfranchise local decision-making. We supported the group in forming Protect Wiscasset, whose goal is to stop the project and support responsible development in their community.
In Lowell, MA, we’re working with community leaders like Jake Fortes, Joann Snead, and Alex Solange with Honest Future for Lowell, who are pushing Markley Group—the owner of one of the state’s largest data centers—to be better neighbors. The group is raising concerns about Markley’s plan to double its diesel generator fleet and fuel storage, along with rapid AI-driven expansion that is straining the local electrical grid and threatening reliability for nearby residents.
In Boston's Longwood Medical Area, hospitals still rely on the polluting Medical Area Total Energy Plant (MATEP). Medical professionals, students, and residents organized to push state officials to convene community members, the plant owner, and hospitals to discuss replacing the plant's diesel generators with truly renewable solutions.
Community leaders march to the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs with a simple message: it's time our grid operator puts communities first (Photo credit: Marilyn Humphries Photography)
The Fix the Grid campaign and the Applied Economics Clinic released a national scorecard evaluating regional grid operators—and ISO-New England ranked last for transparency and accountability. Community leaders across the region delivered the findings to state officials, demanding reforms that would open board meetings to the public, strengthen community engagement, and make our grid serve people and the planet, not fossil fuel interests.
These victories show what’s possible when neighbors turn private pain into public power. From capping toxic landfills to fighting for clean air and a renewable future, your support is the thread that binds this movement together. Thank you!
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