In 1998 the Environmental League of Massachusetts turned 100 and began its second century of advocacy and education on behalf of our environment. Founded in 1898 as the Massachusetts Forestry Association, ELM has a long and distinguished history of informing the public about and advocating for strong, responsible public policies to protect our natural resources and public health.
At the time of our founding, the organization focused its attention on fostering good forestry practices, creating the state park system, planting shade trees, and combating plant pests and diseases. As people became more aware of water pollution, air pollution, toxic chemicals, and other threats to the environment, ELM's mission expanded to include these issues as well.
The story of ELM over the past century is a major part of the history of environmentalism in Massachusetts. At this proud moment, it seems appropriate to remember some of ELM's key milestones and the people who made them possible:
1898. Joseph S. Nowell and Allen Chamberlain and seven other incorporators found the Massachusetts Forestry Association. Its first initiative is to advocate for the establishment of the State Park System and to fight inappropriate development of the state's highest peak, Mount Greylock.
1913. Harris Reynolds, the long-time Secretary of the Association, becomes known as the Father of Town Forests because of his advocacy for the first state legislation in the country to establish such forests. Reynolds had traveled to Europe with William Wharton (who would later serve for many years as President of the Association) to study how European town forests were managed.
1921. The Association advocates successfully for the creation of a state Department of Conservation. Over the next six years, at the urging of the Association, the state would add 90,000 acres to the state forest system.
1936. Now known as the Massachusetts Forest & Park Association (MFPA), the organization defeats a proposal to build two highways to the top of the Metropolitan District Commission's Blue Hill Reservation, just south of Boston.
1937. Forest and Park News, the pre-cursor of our current ELM Bulletin, begins publication.
1941. The MFPA celebrates the passage of the state's first water pollution law, directing the Department of Public Health to establish regulations "to prevent pollution or contamination of any or all the lakes, ponds, streams, tidal waters, and flats within the Commonwealth or of the tributaries of such tidal waters and flats."
1957. The legislature creates town Conservation Commissions, after a several-year lobbying campaign by MFPA.
1958. MFPA successfully lobbies for new legislation to protect the state's hawks and owls.
1962. Rachel Carson brings the danger of DDT and other pesticides to the world's attention with the publication of Silent Spring, reviewed by MFPA Executive Committee Member (and later President) Herbert Pratt in the December issue of Forest and Park News. The legislature, spurred on by the Association, establishes a Pesticide Control Commission.
1965. MFPA Executive Director Ben Nason celebrates the successful campaign for the Coastal Wetlands and Inland Wetlands Act. The two laws would be combined and strengthened in 1971.
1970. MFPA takes part in a City Hall Plaza display to mark the first Earth Day, April 22.
1972. The voters approve Article 97 to the Massachusetts Constitution, the Environmental Bill of Rights, which the Association had strongly supported in the legislature.
1973. In our 75th Anniversary year, Executive Director Michael Ventresca played a key role in the passage of the Massachusetts Clean Waters Act, establishing effluent limitations and a new permit system for industry and municipalities.
1977. Legislature enacts an MFPA priority bill "regulating the labelling, distribution, sale, storage, transportation, use, application and disposal of pesticides."
1983. MFPA's advocacy is critical to enactment of a major Open Space Bond and of the nation's first Acid Rain Control Act.
1987. Executive Director Kelly McClintock and Legislative Director Judy Shope (of what is by now known as the Environmental Lobby of Massachusetts, or ELM), have a banner year, as the legislature enacts the Solid Waste and Low Level Radioactive Waste Acts and a second Open Space Bond.
1992. The Watershed Act, which will protect clean water by protecting the lands near water supplies, is the major ELM priority to become law this year.
1996. A seven-year battle for a state Rivers Protection Act ends happily thanks in no small part to the strategy and drafting of Environmental League Legislative Director Paul Wingle and Vice Chairman Richard Johnson. Legislature also passes a new Open Space Bond bill, with strong support from the "Guns and Roses" coalition.
1997. Thanks to a major grant from the Jessie B. Cox Charitable Trust, Environmental League President Jim Gomes announces the formation of the Massachusetts Environmental Collaborative, organizational members from around the state that will work together to improve the environmental community's collective research, advocacy, and communications capabilities.
The Future. ELM today deals with a wide array of issues, some of which would have been familiar to our founders, some that are new. Cities and towns search for ways to protect open space and community character. Industrial society struggles to end its overreliance on toxic chemicals. Both here and overseas, poor people bear a disproportinate share of our environmental ills. The world tries to come to grips with the threats of global climate change and ocean pollution. For all we have done in our first century, it may well be that the Environmental League's greatest accomplishments remain ahead of it.