Citizens Awareness Network

At A Glance

Contact: 

Deb Katz

Location: 

Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts

Primary Issue Area:

  • Climate Change & Energy
  • Environmental Health
  • Land & Water
  • Living Economies

Active since:

1991

Grants Received In:

  • 2004
  • 2001
  • 2000
  • 1999
  • 1997
  • 1996

Tax Status:

501(c)(3)

Core volunteers:

18

Community Size:

25,000

Group Links:

Our Purpose

CAN is a grassroots environmental organization working to end the production of unaffordable and dangerous nuclear power and its deadly waste, and replace it with sustainable, reliable, and affordable energy generation. We are therefore committed to a democratically led, environmentally just, and scientifically sound solution for nuclear waste. CAN began in 1991 in the Deerfield River Valley in western Massachusetts by a group of frightened citizens committed to protecting their children and their environment from nuclear contamination. We came to realize that our plight was shared by reactor and waste communities alike that are targets because we were poor, rural and people of color. We oppose environmental racism and are committed to environmental justice solutions to the nuclear waste crisis. Our work bridges the obstructions created by the nuclear industry which pit impacted communities against each other. CAN has evolved into a regional group with our Board of Directors including representatives from each of our chapters running.

Summary of Projects

To support the 1999 Northeast Action Camp II, a week of activist training to give citizens the knowledge and tools to confront issues related to nuclear generation, waste disposal and decommissioning of the region's aging nuclear power plants.

for its Nuclear Free New England Campaign.

To fund implementation of CAN's Radioactive Waste Caravan project which will bring attention to many of the public health and environmental justice issues shipping high level radioactive wastes across public transp0rtation routes raises. As operating nuclear power plants come to the end of their functional lives and are decommissioned, this issue will become more pressing. CAN is one of only a few grassroots groups nationally addressing these concerns.