Taking the Stage: The Community Behind the Victory
Six years after neighbors in New Bedford began organizing against a proposed waste transfer station, their persistence – and trust in each other – delivered in a way few thought possible.
From left: Wendy Morrill, CLF staff attorney Suhasini Ghosh, CLF Director of Communities and Toxics Erica Kyzmir-McKeon, Michael McHugh, Dorene McHugh, and Betty Saulnier, whose organizing and advocacy helped shape the community campaign opposing the proposed waste transfer station in New Bedford. Photo: Danielle Dong.
Under the harsh, bright lights inside the Casimir Pulaski School auditorium, three members of the New Bedford Board of Health sat before a packed house.
Neighbors filled nearly every seat. Others stood shoulder to shoulder along the aisles and the back wall, protest T-shirts, handmade signs tucked under arms.
The first board member voted no – the site was no place for a waste transfer station. A hopeful murmur rippled through the room.
The second vote came back yes. Audience members exchanged wary glances. For some of them, that single word carried a cascade of consequences: the daily churn of trucks, the stench of garbage on humid days, rats, noise, the creeping dread of what could be coming to the city.
All eyes swung back to the stage. One vote left. “You could hear a pin drop,” recalled Michael McHugh, a lifelong resident of New Bedford.
The third board member leaned into the microphone: No. The board’s final vote: 2 to 1 – the waste transfer station could not move forward.
The auditorium erupted. People leapt to their feet, hugging whoever stood closest. Some laughed through tears. Others cried openly. Wendy Morrill, one of the core community organizers, turned and found herself in a hug with two young women standing just behind her – the granddaughters of Mary Meyer, a beloved local activist who had died during the long campaign. The women wore necklaces carrying Meyer’s ashes. “It felt like Mary was with us,” Morrill said.
And in the middle of it all, still sitting down, Betty Saulnier reached into her bag, pulled out a bright yellow sign she had made ahead of time – just in case. On it, in thick, black strokes: Thank you! She held the sign high toward the stage.
“I just needed to say something,” she said. “I wanted them to know they made a difference.” What moved her most was hearing Board of Health member Alex Weiner vote against allowing the facility to move forward – and cite reasons that showed he had listened. “We were heard,” Saulnier added.
For Alex St. Pierre, CLF’s vice president of environmental justice, who has watched New Bedford tackle these challenges for years, the moment carried a weight that was hard to explain. New Bedford residents already carry more environmental burden than most – two active Superfund sites still in cleanup, and a long history of industrial neighbors who failed to deliver on their promises.
“This win shows what’s possible when residents are informed, supported, and respected,” she said. “But it also shows how hard communities have to work just to be heard.” Most communities don’t get this far.
The proposed facility would sit within an industrial park right within walking distance of homes and about a mile from a nearby school.
A Community at Stake
To understand the victory, you have to understand what it means for New Bedford as a whole to have shouldered environmental burdens like this for decades.
He remembers, too, watching the Polaroid Corporation move into the area in the 1960s, promising to be a good neighbor – and what followed. Chemical odors drifted through open bedroom windows at night. A white film coated cars by morning.
“Six of my very best friends died before the age of 60 from cancer,” he said. “They all lived on this very street.” It was a loss the community carried for years, with no clear answers and no one to hold accountable. McHugh watched as the consequences of industrial development became impossible to ignore. “Our parents didn’t really stand up against it. I don’t think they knew what was coming. And by then, it was too late.” He wasn’t about to let that happen again. So, when South Coast Renewables – formerly known as Parallel Products – filed its first applications to build the transfer station in 2019, community members across New Bedford and beyond paid close attention. The proposed facility – tucked inside a business park within roughly half a mile of homes, a school, and the protected Acushnet Cedar Swamp – would send a constant stream of heavy commercial trucks hauling garbage past residential neighborhoods daily.
The waste transfer station proposed inside this New Bedford industrial park would border residential streets. Photo: Adilson González Morales.
Behind the Spotlight: How They Organized
Onstage that night were three decision-makers. But the real protagonists had spent years in the audience – and on doorsteps, at kitchen tables, and out on the sidewalk in the sun.
South Coast Neighbors United, the grassroots coalition Wendy Morrill co-founded, filed legal challenges at every regulatory stage of the application process, with support from CLF attorneys. They ran a radio campaign, lobbied state legislators, held community walks, and flooded public meetings. Their roughly $10,000 budget came largely from small donations, grants, and neighbors pitching in out of their own pockets. “Everything else was time, sweat, and showing up,” Morrill said.
Michael McHugh drew on decades of community history while speaking at public hearings. Photo: Dani Dong.
Michael McHugh became the community’s institutional memory. He ensured the Board of Health understood what New Bedford had lost over the decades – its access to nature, its sense of safety – and what unchecked industrial development could do to people’s lives. And he brought humor, too. During the Board of Health hearings, he played video footage he’d filmed in his backyard showing rats already drawn to the area by nearby industrial operations. As the footage rolled, he narrated: “There he goes – Ratatouille.” Even the board laughed.
But Michael wasn’t the only McHugh involved – he and his wife, Dorene, joined the effort as a unit. A painter and crafter, Dorene McHugh brought a steady calm. While others burned with urgency, her presence had a way of returning a room to calm when tensions ran high. Asked about the campaign’s greatest success, she didn’t mention the vote. “The people,” she said. “And the friendships that have been made.”
Betty Saulnier, affectionately dubbed the group’s private investigator, approached the opposition the way she approaches mystery novels: by checking every detail. While reviewing company filings, she noticed unusually low traffic projections. The study, she discovered, had been conducted while the nearby Casimir Pulaski School was out of session and relied on pandemic-era data. So she went out and counted herself – and she wasn’t alone. “Christine Kelley, Dorene McHugh, Charlie Kennedy, and many others joined too,” said Saulnier. “In one instance, even Leo Choquette, our Ward 1 councilor, helped. We wanted real numbers.”
Wendy Morrill, left, and Tracy Wallace, right, helped lead community organizing against the proposed waste transfer station in New Bedford. The #DontTrashNB design appeared on campaign materials and T-shirts worn by residents throughout the fight.
And then there were the architects: Morrill and coalition vice president Tracy Wallace. It was Wallace – who lives about half a mile from the proposed site – who first spotted the threat and reached out to South Coast Neighbors United via its Facebook page, putting this proposal on the coalition’s radar back in February 2019. Due to cryptic flyers and a last-minute change of meeting location, Wallace was also the only community member who showed to the first community meeting organized by the developers. Soon, Wallace made sure that changed – recruiting neighbors, tracking filings, and turning a one-person meeting into a coalition.
Morrill and Wallace highlight that the fight was about something bigger than the immediacy of the proposed site. “It was about preventing a polluting facility from further marginalizing the city,” said Wallace.
Together, they built an organizing culture that didn’t run on hierarchy. “There was no boss,” said Morrill. “Roles weren’t assigned – they were discovered. Everyone had their moment, and there were no small roles.”
Betty, Michael, Dorene, Wendy, and Tracy represent just a fraction of the people behind this victory. The fight extended well beyond the streets closest to the proposed site – it was a citywide effort.
“Matt O’Donnell, Christine Kelley, Karen Chin, Jacob Chin, Lorene Sweeney, Christina Lambert-Gorwyn, Olga Rodriguez, and Sabrina (Davis) Zak were all part of the core group,” said Morrill. “But there are more names behind this victory than any one story could hold.” Over the course of six years, more than a dozen New Bedford community members poured their time and energy into this fight – some from day one, and others stepping in at critical moments along the way. “It was a collaborative effort to protect our entire community from further industrial risk and pollution,” added Morrill.
And across the board, community members contributed in countless ways: knocking on doors, attending hearings, sharing updates online. When the team stood at the roadside for hours, holding protest signs on hot afternoons, passing neighbors stopped to bring sunscreen and cold drinks. No contribution was overlooked.
Law, Trust, and Lived Experience
Residents did not face the process alone. For years, CLF had been in the room with them – attending community meetings, listening to what neighbors had experienced firsthand, helping them explore legal strategies, and working through options side by side.
CLF staff attorney Suhasini Ghosh and CLF Director of Communities and Toxics Erica Kyzmir-McKeon spent long days – and late nights – preparing residents for hearings, answering questions, and translating legal procedure into actionable steps.
For Ghosh, the victory reflected years of shared work. “It was one of the most powerful experiences I’ve had doing this work,” she said. The relationship worked because it was genuinely reciprocal. CLF brought legal strategy. Residents brought lived expertise – and a dogged willingness to use it.
“We came in as learners as much as lawyers,” said Kyzmir-McKeon. “The residents understood their neighborhoods, the city’s history, and this company in ways no expert witness could replicate. That knowledge shaped everything we did.”
CLF attorneys Erica Kyzmir-McKeon, Alex St. Pierre, and Suhasini Ghosh attended Board of Health hearings alongside New Bedford residents.
Beyond New Bedford: Lessons from the Community
The people behind this fight aren’t just proud of what they won. They want others to win, too. Asked what they would tell communities across New England facing similar challenges, they didn’t hesitate. “First things first – it’s winnable,” Morrill said. But success, she added, shouldn’t require sacrificing the very life communities are trying to protect. “Whatever you can give, at whatever point you can give it – that’s all we ask.”
Stories matter, too. “You can lay out all the facts,” Morrill said, “but if those calling the shots don’t hear a story about someone whose life is actually affected, it doesn’t land the same way.”
Outcomes like New Bedford’s, St. Pierre added, are still not guaranteed elsewhere. Too often, the system is stacked against communities. “The regulations at stake were written in another era – and they were not written with residents in mind,” she said. “Communities have to fight back in their spare time, with no compensation and no institutional footing, against opponents who have been preparing for years.”
That imbalance, St. Pierre noted, is why CLF is pushing for stronger environmental justice protections in every New England state – laws that guarantee meaningful public participation, language access, and real accountability.
“The goal,” St. Pierre said, “is to change the game so that what happened in New Bedford isn’t the exception.”
The New Bedford City Council issued resolutions recognizing community members’ dedication in standing against the waste transfer station. Photo: Dani Dong.
Curtain Call
Back in the Casimir Pulaski auditorium, by the end of the night, the lights dimmed. The Board of Health members gathered their papers. Neighbors filtered out, feet heavy, spirits light. And after six years, the community had held the line.
For Michael McHugh, the moment that stays with him isn’t the vote itself. It’s the parking lot afterward, when neighbors came up and shook his hand. “Thanks a lot,” they told him. “I didn’t think you had a chance. I’m so glad you kept going.”
Some community members who had been quietly watching for years only revealed themselves that night – coming up in the parking lot to say they’d been following every development. “You never know who’s paying attention,” Saulnier said. “But they were.”
“We knew we did everything we needed to do as a community,” said Dorene McHugh. “So, whatever happened, we could all actually sleep peacefully that night. And that’s very important.”
The “#DontTrashNB” design appeared on campaign materials and T-shirts worn by residents during the fight over the proposed waste transfer station.
South Coast Neighbors United – A Decade in the Making
The victory over the proposed waste transfer station didn’t come out of nowhere. For more than a decade, residents across Massachusetts’ South Coast – including in New Bedford – have been organizing to protect their neighborhoods from polluting infrastructure. “Often with little warning and even less transparency,” said Alex St. Pierre, CLF’s vice president of environmental justice.
New Bedford resident and community organizer Wendy Morrill co-founded South Coast Neighbors United and worked with neighbors across the area over several years to build the coalition that later opposed the waste transfer station. Photo: Dani Dong.
At the center of many of those fights is South Coast Neighbors United, a grassroots organization co-founded by Wendy Morrill in 2015, with members from across the South Coast of Massachusetts. The group – which has engaged hundreds of members over the years – formed originally to fight a separate proposal: a plan to expand liquefied natural gas tanks and pipelines near homes and schools in Acushnet. That five-year campaign ended in a win that galvanized the group. They learned how to read regulatory filings, how to mobilize a community, and how to stay together through the long stretches when progress felt impossible.
When South Coast Renewables (previously Parallel Products) filed its first applications for the waste transfer station in 2019, South Coast Neighbors United was ready. Tracy Wallace, who first brought the waste transfer station proposal to the group’s attention, has since become its vice president – helping steer SCNU’s strategy not just in New Bedford but across the South Coast. Without Wallace’s early push, the campaign against the waste transfer station in New Bedford might never have taken shape. “She was the catalyst to all of it,” said Morrill. “Without her doing the initial digging and bringing it to our attention, none of this would have happened.”
For Wallace, the fight was always about something bigger than one facility. “These projects don’t land randomly,” Wallace said. “They’re often proposed in communities that already carry more than their share of environmental burdens.”
Map of EPA-designated Superfund sites across the South Coast region, including two in New Bedford and additional sites in Dartmouth and Fairhaven – highlighting the area’s long history of fighting industrial contamination and environmental burden.
New Bedford – and nearby towns along the coast – have repeatedly been targeted for industrial development, often without meaningful public engagement or language access for non-English-speaking residents. Over time, residents have learned to recognize the signs: incomplete information, rushed timelines, and communities left out of the conversation.
“We have now set a precedent that other communities can follow – that we don’t have to just rubber-stamp polluting industries,” said Wallace.
“Each case has made us stronger. We learned how to show up, how to listen to each other, and how to keep going even when things felt overwhelming,” Morrill added. “And now we also have a track record of winning, too.”
They are, as Morrill put it, just getting started.
