Bob La Trémouille reports:
Governor Patrick has included $235,601 in his budget to proceed with the DCR / MDC’s strikingly irresponsible project at Magazine Beach. This project is so irresponsible that the DCR / MDC manager spent years flatly and simply lying about what he was doing.
The governor's budget for Magazine Beach destruction is specified in his budget for the Department of Conservation and Recreation. It is at http://mass.gov/budget/brec08/dpt08/hdcr.htm.
It is difficult to think of a project which by the terms that the proponent claims to stand for, has more to oppose it.
I today hand delivered the following letter to the Governor's Office (some edits added):
March 12, 2007
Governor Deval Patrick
State House, Beacon Hill
Boston, MA 02133
Dear Governor Patrick:
Your budget calls for $235,601 for continued environmental destruction at Magazine Beach in Cambridge.
Your have included $235,601 to proceed with the DCR / MDC’s strikingly irresponsible project at Magazine Beach. This project is so irresponsible that the DCR / MDC manager spent years flatly and simply lying about what he was doing. The details of your budget proposal call for environmental destruction at Magazine Beach in Cambridge as specified in the request for the Department of Conservation and Recreation.
It is difficult to think of a project which by the terms that the proponent claims to stand for, has more to oppose it.
This is a project for a department which has claimed it is fighting for swimming in the Charles River. The department has proceeded to wall off Magazine Beach from the Charles River with a wall of designer plants which the DCR calls "native," but which are unfit for the Charles River. The DCR had major delays because its falsely native plants kept dying.
The DCR claims to be concerned about wetlands. The DCR spent many thousands of dollars destroying the wetlands at Magazine Beach to put in the designer plants. Then they put in an artificially created puddle several feet from the Charles River, the Bumpy Memorial Pool. This artificial pool was quite popular with the native Charles River White Geese and other aquatic birds in the area until, apparently, the geese sensed the death coming to Magazine Beach. The DCR calls this artificial pool wetlands.
The DCR’s "Charles River Master Plan" calls for a lawn stretching to the Charles River at Magazine Beach. But those designer plants directly conflict with their claimed wishes.
The Charles River White Geese have been the DCR’s most valuable possession in this part of the Charles River. The DCR recognized their importance by guaranteeing, repeatedly over a period of four years, that their project would do no harm to the Charles River White Geese. In September 2004, the DCR, simultaneously with the City of Cambridge, walled off the Charles River from the luscious grass that the Charles River White Geese had been eating for 26 years. The Charles River White Geese have been living in this one mile habitat centered on the BU Bridge throughout that 26 year period. In one big swoop, the DCR and the City of Cambridge took all their food away from them.
When asked how this starvation campaign fit his promise to do no harm, the manager stated that starving them is not harming them.
The DCR took a poll on the public’s opinion of the Charles River. A majority of respondents said do nothing. So the DCR is spending millions not just on the continuing outrage at Magazine Beach, but also in destroying between 449 and 660 trees between Magazine Beach and the Longfellow Bridge.
The DCR’s explanation for the tree destruction translates as "Won’t it look great in 40 years!" Part of the mumbo jumbo is historical ranting for a history that never existed, and this non-existent history is their justification for destroying hundreds of trees, killing all the resident animals, and destroying all the wetlands.
The forthcoming project that you are funding fits the pattern. Normal human beings looking at Magazine Beach see no need to "improve" it. The concept is flatly and simply foreign to the sane viewer.
The plan of the DCR is to exacerbate the starvation they spent fours years denying they would do.
They are digging up all the grass at the Magazine Beach playing fields.
This is in furtherance of the DCR’s emphasis on water-related activities on the Charles River. But they are starving aquatic animals for "improvements" to athletic fields which are anything but water related and the "improvements" are a waste of money.
After digging up and removing all the grass and topsoil, the DCR intends to put in grass, plus topsoil, plus poisons, plus sprinklers. The sprinklers are needed to replace the wetlands which were destroyed to put in that wall of bushes which has no business on the Charles River.
This project follows on a similar equally "water related" project at Ebersol Fields near Massachusetts General Hospital.
Until this project, there was no need for poisons at Magazine Beach, but the DCR is putting in poisons. If the poisons do not work, they can be expected to receive similar treatment that the DCR did at Ebersol Fields. The DCR put in more powerful poisons, poisons labelled with prohibitions against use near water. The next day the Charles River was dead from the Mass. Ave. bridge to the harbor.
The most important real results of this project will be corporate welfare to the companies paid to do the project and a significantly worse situation at Magazine Beach.
The moral and fiscal bankruptcy of the work on the Charles River is nothing less than outrageous.
The key DCR people should be fired for their part in this project and for the lies which have gotten them this far.
The project should be killed and the money put toward open space expenditures which make sense.
It is my very strong hope that you will immediately reverse your support for this outrageous and wasteful project.
Sincerely,
Robert J. La Trémouille
