The critical role of SAFE and other community organizations in the deal between wind developer and the city

You may have seen SAFE featured in the Globe this Sunday! What an honor to have Yvonne Abraham share our story with the world.

SAFE has long fought to ensure the closure of Salem’s coal plant, and subsequent development, is fair and just for our community and our planet. That fight took on new urgency in the Spring of 2021 when important decisions started to be made about an offshore wind marshaling center planned for the site.

Our efforts included testimony and monitoring at numerous state and federal agency meetings, supporting a workforce equity grant with MassHire, late nights at Planning Board meetings, countless fact-finding research and conversations, regular connection points with the north shore labor council, community nonprofit organizations, the City of Salem, city councilors, and importantly, our fellow neighbors and civics groups in Salem. 

The most incredible piece to this story is the way community groups met and aligned regularly on a common goal and purpose. We learned together and grew together. SAFE hopes we will stick together to ensure new projects incorporate community voice and environmental justice principles. When we center these principles, we center the community and lift all boats in the process.

SAFE hosted webinars with experts tied to offshore wind jobs and early access points like KidWind, impacts to birds and whales, and a program on world class ports. We provided detailed educational material about our port project in a bilingual SATV program. Often these projects were in partnership with the League of Women Voters and the Latino Leadership Coalition.

In the spring of 2023 it became clear that SAFE and the community at large would need to work together to find a common voice if we had any hope of being involved in the community benefit agreement. For history’s sake, it’s helpful to know that it is within SAFE’s DNA to be involved in community benefit agreements tied to energy projects at Salem’s port. Go back far enough in our blog history and you’ll see our efforts, and how this impacted outcomes for a CBA tied to Footprint Power. You can imagine the frustration of SAFE co-founder and then co-chair, Pat Gozemba when the community was told that it would just be the city and Crowley negotiating the CBA. Well, as the Salem community should know by now, it is not wise to say no to Patrica A. Gozemba.

SAFE built a coalition working group with neighborhood associations surrounding the offshore wind port (Historic Derby Street Neighborhood Association, The Point Neighborhood Association, Bridge Street Neck, Salem Common Neighborhood Association, and Salem Willows) as well as civics groups (Latino Leadership Coalition and the League of Women Voters – Salem) and we came together dedicated to Environmental Justice principles in our asks so that we could establish one voice and provide community cohesion in the request to be involved in the negotiations. We called ourselves the Salem Offshore Wind Alliance (SOWA). Once established, we begged and pleaded for pro-bono legal representation from Conservation Law Foundation’s Environmental Justice Program & the Community Economic Development Clinic at Albany Law School.

Mayor Pangallo, newly elected by most of us in this coalition, agreed to include SOWA in the negotiation via two representatives. The group elected Barbara Kelly of the Historic Derby Street Neighborhood Association for her abutter status and her leadership within her association and neighborhood, and our other representative was none other than Lucy Corchado. Lucy, an institution in her own right, already wearing a million hats for her decades of service to the Salem community, in the context of this appointment, is the Point Neighborhood Association president and SAFE Embajadora. 

Over the course of the negotiations, Barbara and Lucy attended and represented SOWA. A fun discovery along the way for both our reps: Barbara’s grandfather built and lived in the house Lucy now owns. This is what comes of coalition building around a shared goal – a sense of community, connection, and historic significance emerges.

We met as a working group regularly throughout, ensuring some of our key asks ended up in the final result and though one can always want for more, we are proud of the outcome, though it should also be noted SAFE and no other community voice was signatory to the agreement. The CBA between the City of Salem and Crowley includes:

• Hiring targets by year for local, women and minority residents
• $400,000 in scholarships for offshore wind or maritime-related career paths and educational opportunities, with a preference for Salem residents. 
• $187,500 for bilingual outreach and educational programs to increase access for community members to the jobs available in the offshore wind industry, with a particular focus on the existing Career Technical Institute (CTI) at Salem High School. 
• A commitment by Crowley to utilize local supply chain sourcing for the project to the greatest extent feasible. 
• At least $500,000 to support a new Climate Adaptation Fund to fund City sustainability and resiliency projects, and a commitment to port electrification by 2040.
• $850,000 for an improvement project to the Essex Street/Webb Street intersection. 
• $1,250,000 for additional personnel in the Harbormaster’s Department due to the maritime operation of the terminal. 
• More than $3.5 Million for Salem Public Schools and educational programs – including Indigenous history and culture.
• Transparency and accountability measures to ensure regular reports and community involvement are required as part of the CBA.

This last point about transparency and accountability is a lesson learned on the last CBA – which had no such component. This piece ensures that our community stays involved and in partnership on the metrics and goals laid out in the CBA. SOWA expects to be involved in the working group established to support the goals for local diverse hiring, port electrification, and good neighbor practices. The working group is expected to be established in June.

Notably and quite unique, but so critical to workforce equity and our community, is the commitment to $1.25 million tied to childcare. SAFE long ago wrote about this here. In all, the CBA’s value is about 3% of the total estimated project cost or $7.5 million over the course of 25 years.

SAFE thanks the following individuals and organizations for the time and support they provided to this process: Anxhela Mile of the Conservation Law Foundation, Edward W. De Barbieri of Community Economic Development Clinic at Albany Law School,  New England for Offshore Wind Coalition (notably the National Wildlife Federation, Environmental League of Massachusetts, and Clean Water Action), Marjorie Kelly of the Democracy Collaborative, Dr. Marcos Luna, Dr. John Hayes, Dr. Nathan Philips, Dr. Eric Hines, Matt Shields at NREL, Megan Amsler of Self Reliance, The Environmental Justice Office, GreenRoots, Emerald Cities Collaborative, Vineyard Power, and Buddy Andrade of the Old Bedford Village Development Corporation.

Bonnie Bain is SAFE’s Offshore Wind Program Manager.