~ Op-Ed ~ To the Commonwealth: Everett Is No Longer the “Last Mile”

By Mayor Carlo DeMaria, Jr.

In 1953, a young Boston University graduate student, John DiGiacomo, wrote a thesis on the social history of Everett to that point. In surveying Everett in the early 1950s, DiGiacomo wrote “Everett’s newly adopted title, ‘City of Diversified Industry,’ is certainly appropriate in that no title ever fit a city more accurately…chemicals and chemical compounds, oil and all its derivatives, iron and all kinds of things made of iron…and electric current to run them all are a part of the city’s industrial makeup. Everett is now the most highly industrialized city of its size in the country and this boast can be extended to the world.”

While Everett’s industrial past was indeed once a source of great community pride, the toll Everett residents paid over the decades to play host to industries that powered the Commonwealth and the wider region was high. At great expense to public health, to our local environment, and to the infrastructure of our community, Everett spent more than a century as an industrial front-line community. For decades, Everett residents toiled in chemical and oil plants, leaving a legacy that includes higher than average rates of mesothelioma and an inordinately high urban heat island effect that risks exacerbating the health risks of vulnerable populations.

131 years ago, in 1893, the Cochrane Chemical Works, known today as the Monsanto Company, became the city’s first large corporation. Other industrial firms such as The New England Fuel and Transportation Company (known today as Everett LNG), American Agricultural Chemical Company, and the Everett Factories Corporation realized the potential of the acres of waterfront property, availability of transportation, and proximity to Boston as prime sites for future plants and by 1920, Everett was already established as an industrial city. By 1939 and the onset of the Second World War, General Electric purchased land in Everett and by 1941 was being awarded defense contracts by the government to help produce aircraft engine parts and components that would aid in America’s fight against the Axis powers during the war.

And though, as Mr. DiGiacomo documented in the middle of the 20^th century, industry continued to hum along for a time, as needs changed, the economic incentives associated with Everett hosting industry began to dissipate. Once burgeoning factories began to quiet before eventually shuttering altogether, ensuring that the people of Everett would not only have to navigate the health and environmental implications of working in and around chemicals and fuels, but for many, they would have to do it without the same guarantee of a well-paying job. Meanwhile, for decades the city was blocked from developing large swaths of its own land.

In short, Everett was given a shortsighted deal by toxic industrial entities to help power the region in exchange for environmental degradation, poorer public health outcomes, and jobs that eventually went by the wayside. And, as if that wasn’t enough, generations of Everett residents were forced to cohabitate with an industrial graveyard of a bygone era, rather than enjoy and benefit from the splendor of its waterfront. As Mayor, I have made it a central goal of my administration to rid the city of its inglorious industrial monuments and move it forward toward a healthier, more environmentally just and economically prosperous future.

My administration has been working tirelessly to move public policy forward across vital domains, including housing, transportation, and open-space, while also forming mutually-beneficial public and private partnerships to catapult Everett into the future. This has led to universally-lauded transit-oriented development, including the siting of well over a dozen housing developments that adhere to the city’s inclusionary zoning ordinance (and including the first family affordable housing development to be constructed in Everett in nearly half a century) and first-in-the-region implementation of dedicated bus and cycle lanes. Everett’s transformative Host Community Agreement with Wynn serves as a model, as the arrival of Encore has generated significant funding for the city – leading to the revitalization of city parks and open spaces – and leaves the door wide open to even more positive development, including additional housing, office space, and sports & entertainment venues.

Folks: After 131 years of breathing in pollution, of always delivering when called upon, of sacrificing its environment and economic vitality for the good of the entire Commonwealth, the City of Everett is on the move and it is booming. But as the city works to build a brighter future, we face new challenges – ones that threaten to undo the progress we’ve made.

A 20-acre Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) has been proposed for the roughly 100-acre former ExxonMobil site that has, for generations, housed dormant gas tanks, pillars of environmental injustice. While my administration has centered climate-friendly initiatives and supports the Commonwealth’s ambitious push to meet its 2050 emissions goals, that the largest BESS facility in Massachusetts would be crammed into an area of the city that might potentially play host to developments including a professional soccer stadium and is situated just across from thousands of housing units permitted since 2020 is a 21^st century example of environmental injustice.

While suburban community projects, such as the Outer Cape BESS in Provincetown or the Cranberry Point BESS in Carver, are fractions of the size of this proposal and are located in out-of-the-way parts of town, Everett is being asked to stunt its growth by hosting a comparatively enormous project in one of its most potentially economically viable corridors – an area that for decades the city could only have dreamt of redeveloping.

For too long, this stretch of Everett has been an area akin to a “last mile” – where higher-end developers have avoided and economic vibrancy has long been off the table. For those looking to work with Everett to turn this area into the next Seaport, the prospect of the largest BESS facility in Massachusetts crowding their projects is a potentially fatal disincentive. This is grossly unfair to the people of Everett, who would benefit from the jobs and tax incentives these projects would bring to the city.

Further complicating this proposal is the precariousness of the region’s wind energy projects. Though wind infrastructure may be a cost-effective and sensible approach to generating renewable energy, a change in administration in Washington threatens delays and inaction, possibly ensuring that if Everett is compelled to host a large BESS facility, it could be many years before it becomes a valuable tool in the fight against climate change, leaving Everett residents to once again stare at a largely dormant facility and wonder “what if.” This is especially true as the legislature marches toward expediting the siting of facilities like this through a mandated 12-month consolidated permitting process.

I understand the need to compel communities into action, but the BESS proposal for Everett, which falls well outside the margins of similar projects around the Commonwealth, is a glaring example of the law’s shortsightedness. And I say with great pride that mine has always been an administration of action: we have never needed any extra push to do the right thing.

Instead, Everett has proven time and again to be a Yes-In-My-Backyard community. We take pride in that chapter of our history in which the city genuinely could be called the “City of Diversified Industry.” I shake the hands or look in the eyes of lifelong Everett residents and know that these are the men and women who powered the Commonwealth, that mired in the unforgiving work of industry that helped neighbors like Boston and Cambridge becoming global destinations for finance, the life sciences, and academia.

Everett has always been ready to help the Commonwealth and contribute to its progress, but we ask that the Commonwealth now return the favor by ensuring that the development of a massive BESS facility does not sacrifice our city’s future. Let’s work together to find a solution that benefits all residents – not just the state’s energy goals, but the people who have already given so much.