Pittsfield — After more than two decades as executive director of Berkshire Environmental Action Team (BEAT), Jane Winn has retired, effective August 25. But Winn did not leave the top spot open as Deputy Director Brittany Ebeling stepped up the following day to lead the environmental nonprofit organization.
“What started as a scrappy, all-volunteer effort has matured into an environmental advocacy and action powerhouse,” Winn states in an August 26 news release. Her work has been recognized by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection’s (MassDEP’s) Advocate of the Decade Award, and she is the recipient of additional accolades from the Nonprofit Center of the Berkshires and International Conference on Ecology and Transportation, according to the release.
The start of BEAT’s operations, accomplishments under Winn
At 68 years old, Winn said she has reached her longtime retirement goal, but not before sharing her timetable with the organization’s board of directors in 2022 and developing a transition plan.
Enter Ebeling, who was hired as the group’s deputy director the same year and has been working beside Winn, a founding member, ever since. “She is awesome and ready to really take BEAT forward,” Winn said of Ebeling.
In the early 2000s, a group of Berkshire residents were alarmed as the local community college was slated to install a new soccer field without considering the adjacent vernal pool complex, a seasonal wetland that provides habitat for various species of plants and animals. The group went to city, state, and federal conservation agencies, opposing the measure but without any luck in getting an active response.
“We were stunned that the system that should be protecting things—it wasn’t,” Winn said to The Berkshire Edge in a phone interview. “So BEAT was created to try and make our good laws be enforced and improve on the existing laws.”
Throughout her tenure, Winn’s efforts have led the group to stop industrial pollution, provide free educational walks and talks, and work toward developing connected spaces for wildlife to move at road-stream crossings. However, topping her list of successes is winning “an unwinnable fight”: stopping the Kinder Morgan/Tennessee Gas Company’s Northeast Energy direct pipeline from progressing.
The proposed $3.3 billion project would have added a pipeline across the Commonwealth, trekking high-pressure natural gas across the Commonwealth, from Wright, N.Y., to Dracut, Mass. It was withdrawn in 2016 as protesters countered the measure.
“It was just all consuming for two years of our lives and many people’s lives as we went around explaining what was proposed and why it was a really bad idea,” Winn said. “It was huge.”
BEAT has been involved in scrutinizing a Superfund cleanup of the Housatonic River following years of General Electric depositing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into the waterway from the industrial giant’s Pittsfield plant. A multi-decade project involving the Rest of River—the area extending from the conflux of the Housatonic in Pittsfield to Connecticut—includes creating an upland disposal facility (UDF), or toxic-waste repository, in Lee for the least densely contaminated materials dredged from the river, and transporting the materials harboring the highest degree of PCBs out of the area. Residents of the southern Berkshires have long decried the project for safety and lifestyle concerns.
With the transition, Winn assured communities in the path of the project that her support, now as a volunteer, as well as that of BEAT’s “best staff in the world” will continue. “Certainly, BEAT has been involved in this battle since BEAT first started, and I will be staying involved in this issue as well, advising BEAT and still going to all of the [Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Citizen Coordinating Council (CCC)] meetings and other meetings, so there will be that continuity,” she said. “Plus, we have a whole great team of people at BEAT who really care about not only the environment but this issue in particular. So, I think it just means we’ll have even more people keeping their eyes on this.”
Ebeling agreed. “We’re in it for the long haul,” she said.
Looking to the future
For Winn, Ebeling stood out as the next in line for the group’s future for her ability to “politely but very firmly advocate for a position.” During her first week as BEAT’s deputy director, Ebeling’s problem-solving skills confirmed that trait to Winn. “At that point, I knew we hired the right person,” Winn said.
Ebeling and Winn have used the last two years to “basically co-direct” the organization, according to Winn, who touts Ebeling’s expertise at human resources, management, and “running a business.”
“I didn’t intend to be running a business when I started,” Winn said. “I just considered everybody my partners in fighting for the environment, and I think [Ebeling] really has the talent to lead the organization and grow it to a much bigger level.”
A Minnesota native, Ebeling relocated to Sheffield in 2020 after completing graduate school. A bean farmer with a background in economics and urban policies, she has a long history of being an environmental activist.
Working with Winn has honed Ebeling’s skills surrounding policy making, community organizing, and uplifting local regions toward environmental justice aims, she said. “I hugely commend Jane [Winn] for doing what I think many nonprofit leaders in the Berkshires and beyond are looking to do, which is to pass off to the next generation,” Ebeling said. “It takes a person who’s willing to have a great deal of humility, who is willing to let go and let grow beyond the organization that they founded and created.”
Ebeling applauded Winn for choosing to invest “in teaching a young emerging leader the ropes” and the staff to support that transition. “It’s been the pleasure of my life to work with her for the past two years,” she said.
Ebeling intends to “hit the ground running,” expanding the role of the organization’s space at 20 Chapel Street, Pittsfield, a former church site BEAT purchased in 2022 after leasing the structure for about three years. A capital campaign—to raise matching funds required by a $200,000 grant secured through the Massachusetts Cultural Council—is underway to fund a second round of updates to the 1800s building. The project will add solar panels and battery storage to transform the space into a fossil fuel-free climate center that community members can access in the case of a power outage. It will also offer the opportunity to create interactive environmental science exhibits for the community in addition to a net-zero gathering space and hub.
Ebeling said she seeks to “lean into this grassroots character that BEAT has always had” by connecting with neighbors and building on its collective power. The action is intended to link BEAT’s efforts “with broader regional movements across the Northeast,” she said.
For Ebeling, that connection is “more critical than ever” due to threats from the present presidential administration to resurrect pipeline fights and its reactions to emerging contaminants, including per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), or forever chemicals, that affect the area’s soil and water. Toward that end, Ebeling will be working to scale up community members to serve as advocates to counter these emerging threats by being ready “to mobilize our networks … to intervene in complex bureaucratic processes and have regulatory comment periods flooded with strong comments from our communities and be ready for the environmental fights that we don’t even know yet are on the table.”
Ebeling’s background as a farmer prompted her to add to the group’s to-do list a review of how land-use decisions—the employment of pesticides and soil treatments—affect waterways, wetlands, and air. She is also seeking to deepen BEAT’s work on transportation, mobility, and infrastructure interaction with natural spaces.
Passionate about building spaces that are correctly sized and appropriate for rural communities, Ebeling advocates for viable alternatives that “reduce [carbon] emissions in a safe way.” “There’s never been a more important time to respond to these emerging threats in every sense of the term, and we are investing a lot as an organization and thinking about how to equip our community with the tools to powerfully respond,” she said.
