The 2019 Community Sentinel Award for
Environmental Stewardship

About the Award

The impacts of the oil and gas industry are visible across the United States: farms sliced by dangerous pipelines, neighborhoods invaded with fracked wells, towns choked by petrochemical emissions, streams littered with throwaway plastics, regions plagued by extreme weather and a changed climate. But hope abounds in the thousands of volunteers working in their communities and cherished places to document, report, and confront such fossil fuel harms.

To honor these environmental heroes, FracTracker Alliance created the annual Community Sentinel Award for Environmental Stewardship, now in its fifth year, to celebrate individuals whose noble actions exemplify the transformative power of caring, committed, and engaged people. In collaboration with a supportive lineup of sponsors and partners, the award is presented to multiple recipients at a festive reception before a group of fellow activists and others who champion a healthy, sustainable future. Each awardee will also receive $1,000 in recognition of their efforts.

Additionally, each year during the Community Sentinel Award ceremony, we take a moment to honor environmental heroes who passed away in the previous year with the Legacy of Heroes recognition.

Congratulations to the 2019 Sentinel Award winners:

Ron Gulla, Sharon Lavigne, Allie Rosenbluth, and Melissa Troutman.

After being nominated by peers this summer, recipients were selected by a committee of five community defense leaders and environmental champions from around the country. The 2019 judges were Mariah Davis (Choose Clean Water Coalition), Brenda Jo McManama (Indigenous Environmental Network), Kathleen Brophy (Oxfam), Dr. Pamela Calla (New York University), and Matt Krogh (Stand.earth).

We also honored the following individuals posthumously for the Legacy of Heroes recognition: 

Bill Hughes, April Pierson-Keating, Ricky Allen Roles, and John Trallo Sr.