By Roseann Bongiovanni
For over ten years, East Boston fought an Eversource substation proposed across from a children’s playground, beside Logan’s jet fuel tanks, on a flood-prone shoreline along Chelsea Creek. Despite overwhelming public opposition, the state approved the facility. But along the way, we exposed a permitting system stacked against the communities it most affected. In coalition with advocates and communities statewide, we organized to rewrite the rules – and this year, Massachusetts finalized them.
Starting July 1, 2026, companies seeking to build many kinds of new energy infrastructure in Massachusetts – including fossil fuel power plants, gas pipelines, solar farms, battery storage sites, transmission lines, and substations – must complete what’s called a cumulative impact analysis before state approval. In plain terms: companies must look at what a community already lives with before the state lets them add anything new.
Had this rule existed when Eversource proposed the substation, the question would have been different: not whether East Boston could prove harm, but whether the company could prove it would not add to the burdens we already carried.
The assessment will cover 30 conditions, including air pollution, flood risk, heat exposure, and rates of asthma and heart disease. If a neighborhood ranks worse than the state median across the combined 30 conditions, the company can’t treat approval as routine. It must explain how it will avoid, reduce, or address the harm. And it must do so before key decisions are locked in, not after the bulldozers arrive.
The old process assumed neighborhoods started from zero. East Boston didn’t. Lowell, Springfield, New Bedford – none of them did. Decades of unfair siting stacked power plants, fuel tanks, and waste facilities into the same ZIP codes, while the regulatory system treated each new project as if the last twenty hadn’t happened. The cumulative impact rule finally says: those projects are here, and they count.
Alongside this requirement, the state created a grant program so communities can hire engineers, lawyers, and public health experts to scrutinize company claims. When Eversource came to East Boston, the multi-billion-dollar company arrived with attorneys, engineers, and consultants. Our neighborhood organized with what we had: volunteers working nights after their day jobs, neighbors donating money and meeting space, and pro bono legal representation from the Conservation Law Foundation. Together, we carried the fight to the Supreme Judicial Court.
We were outspent and out-staffed at every turn. The new grants begin to correct a process that forced communities to scrape together resources while well-funded companies arrive ready to build.
But the analysis isn’t limited to communities the state has already flagged: residents elsewhere can petition the state to require an analysis when local conditions aren’t fully captured by a mapping tool. And companies can no longer blur the line between actually reducing harm and offering a community benefit to offset it. A new park or playground cannot erase pollution, flood risk, or the safety concerns a project adds.
Massachusetts has committed to building clean energy fast, and we should. But every project lands somewhere, and without rules like these, “somewhere” will be in places that follow the same unfair patterns that got us here.
Not all energy projects carry the same risk. A new gas plant and a rooftop solar program warrant very different review, and the new rule is built to tell them apart. Every review should begin with the same question: what does this community already live with, and would this project make it worse?
A rule on paper is only a beginning. The Energy Facilities Siting Board, which approves these projects, must prove this process is more than a checkbox for companies. That means taking these analyses seriously, weighing community petitions, and rejecting mitigation plans that dress up harm instead of preventing it. The agency’s record has not always inspired confidence – East Boston knows that firsthand. Residents, advocates, reporters, and legislators must keep watching as the first projects move through.
East Boston did not stop the substation. But we helped change the rules that made that approval possible. That matters for East Boston and every community told to accept another project, burden, or sacrifice. The next neighborhood should not have to prove alone that its health, safety, and future count.
Roseann Bongiovanni writes on behalf of the Massachusetts Environmental Justice Table, a statewide coalition of community organizations and advocates working to advance environmental justice across the Commonwealth. She is Executive Director of GreenRoots.