Berkshire Environmental Action Team

MARCHING TO THE BEAT OF PROTECTING WILDLIFE

By Laura Mars
Photos by Anastasia Stanmeyer
April 26, 2022

In 2002, Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield had plans to install soccer fields. A committee of professors, students, and other community members pointed out that soccer fields would impact the area’s vernal pools—huge puddles created by springtime rain and snowmelt that are crucial breeding grounds for wood frogs, salamanders, and other animals, and whose ephemeral nature ensures that no fish are around to eat the animals’ eggs.

Jane Winn, one of the community members on that soccer field committee and executive director of Berkshire Environmental Action Team (BEAT), recalls the outrage over the way the regulatory system, including Pittsfield’s Conservation Commission and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, failed to protect the hydrology of the vernal pools, which is the way water flows into them. Despite the tenacity of concerned citizens and students, the soccer fields were built. This was the impetus for starting BEAT in 2002 and getting incorporated in 2003, says Winn.

An early BEAT win was getting Pittsfield Conservation Commission meetings televised. They simply took a video camera and tripod into the room where the meetings were held (which anyone can do as long as you don’t disrupt the meeting) and shared the video with the local TV station. Eventually, the station installed its own cameras.

According to Winn, “this caused a dramatic change in the way they worked—like enforcing the law! At one of the earliest broadcast meetings, someone who was watching on TV ran into the meeting, breathless, wanting to speak about an issue in their neighborhood.”

BEAT has three major focal areas— stewardship, education and outreach, and watchdogging—with an overarching mission to protect the environment for wildlife. Winn ran the organization out of her home with as many as 14 staff from 2002 to 2019. In November 2019, BEAT rented the former church building on Pittsfield’s Chapel Street on the banks of the Housatonic River.

“I grew up on the Housatonic River,” she says. “It was disgusting. There were no fish. Today, it’s much better. We will have PCBs forever, but now BEAT has a seat at the table with the Housatonic River Initiative in the fight to clean up the river. We now have it in writing from the EPA that they will test new removal technologies, and more of the river sediment will be removed instead of capped.”

In addition to their ongoing work to clean up the Housatonic River, BEAT’s projects include keeping off-track vehicle trails out of state forests, installing air-quality monitors at Pittsfield’s trash incinerator, and working with the city to reduce the size of their landfill.

In 2014, BEAT started looking at the effect of burning fossil fuel because of the negative impact that climate change has on wildlife. Today, they are involved in transitioning the Berkshire’s three peaking power plants (two in Pittsfield, one in Lee) away from fossil fuel. These plants run only when there is a high—or peak— demand for electricity, or about one percent of the time, according to Winn, who says that two of the three will transition to solar plus storage (battery) by the end of 2023.

“Now, they are paid to do nothing, 99 percent of the time,” she notes, and explains that BEAT’s “No Fracked Gas in Mass” program works toward dismantling fossil fuel infrastructure and increase renewable energy. Other BEAT goals are to work through a JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion) lens, connect community members with job opportunities and provide training opportunities for local youth that can build wealth and avoid displacement in communities.

We asked State Representative Smitty Pignatelli about the significance of BEAT in the Berkshires. “I recall an older gentleman telling me years ago that our natural beauty is more valuable than an oil well in Saudi Arabia, and we all need to do what we can to protect it for the next generation to enjoy,” he says. “For 20 years, BEAT has been the protector, and Jane Winn has always been there to answer any questions as well as provide technical resources for all of us to understand the complexities of the issue. We in the Berkshires have been blessed by our natural beauty, which is one of the main reasons people from all over the world visit us and partake in the world-class cultural attractions we offer. We all need to be protectors like Jane and her team. Our future depends on it.”

BEAT is funded by individual donations and state grants. In November 2021, BEAT purchased the Chapel Street building, and its Environmental and Education Center now has a permanent home. “It’s a big space for workshops and offices for me and staff members Chelsey Simmons, Noah Henkedius, Rosemary Wessel, and Jake Laughner, ” says Winn. “Renovations include making the building fully accessible and completely solar powered as part of a zero-net energy future.”

In July, BEAT is hosting workshops to help teachers learn how to teach kids about watersheds through partnering with the Housatonic Valley Association, Hoosic River Watershed, Mass Department of Conservation and Recreation, and Trout Unlimited.

While BEAT’s projects impact the Berkshires directly, former staff members are doing good in other parts of the country—such as teaching and doing conservation work in Boston and Washington, D.C. Winn has been recognized by a number of organizations for her work, including being named one of Berkshire Magazine’s Berkshire 25, receiving the Environmental Service Award (Massachusetts Association of Conservation Commissions), and being presented the Environmental Defenders Award (Housatonic Valley Association).

Noting that a candy wrapper dropped in front of the Berkshire Museum on South Street in Pittsfield will wind up in the Housatonic River more than a half mile away, Winn implores each of us to make BEAT’s vision, our vision: a world where air and water are clean, recognition of our interconnectedness to nature, plenty of land where wildlife thrives, and communities working together to sustain their environmental health and economic vitality.

“Everything we do—from river and park clean-up to managing invasive species is done without herbicides,” Winn says proudly. “It’s all volunteer, manual labor. Pre-COVID, we had 300 volunteers, and we’d love to see those numbers again.”

To become a BEAT volunteer or to donate financial support, call 413-464-9402 or email team@thebeatnews.org. For information on projects and events, visit thebeatnews.org