The State Senate candidates’ forum at the LBJ apartments in Cambridge was last night.
Barrios's endorsee, Revere City Councilor Dan Rizzo was, he said, not clear on all the details of the Urban Ring.
East Boston State Representative Anthony Petrucelli seemed aware of the various Phases and repeatedly endorsed rail. There was one question on the Urban Ring (not mine) and a second reference from someone who said she would have asked about it if the first person hadn't.
I asked about plans for regulation Little League fields at Magazine Beach and the algae bloom last summer just offshore the new “Teddy Ebersol’s Red Sox” Little League fields at Lederman Park.
Runoff there from the 6 acres of commercial sod, with its necessary regimen of fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides (as applied last August and September) led to the unprecedented algae bloom last August and September. I pointed out that the state Department of Conservation and Resources' plans to put in 7 acres of the same stuff at Magazine Beach. We can anticipate the same results. Petrucelli seemed very concerned about beaches, is on the Beaches committee so I'll try to follow up with him on that.
Afterwards I spoke with Rep. Marty Walz about my e-mail to her about the algae bloom and plans for Magazine Beach. She asked if she could forward my e-mail to the DCR for information and I said yes, even a denial of any relation would be useful.
I intended to speak to Marc McGovern, the former Cambridge school committee member who’s pushing for the Little League fields at Magazine Beach, to ask him his opinion of the standard and extraordinary applications of chemicals to the stressed commercial turf on those fields, but missed him. My e-mail to Representative Walz on this subject was addressed to him as well.
Heather Hoffmann in her question time referred to my comments about the algae bloom and said the power plant in East Cambridge has been pumping out hot water into the Charles and that could help answer the question about cause.
Representative Walz and I, speaking after the question session and before I spoke with Heather, agreed that we didn't know any changes with the power plant, but assuming there had been a change, it was possible the changes at Ebersol fields and the power plant could together cause the algae bloom.
Heather told me after that that the power plant has increased operation from 4 to 20 hours a day since its sale by NSTAR to the current owners and is "cooking the Charles." She says the EPA is going after the owners.
She said the current owners, in trying to get out of building the pedestrian walk along the canal in front of the plant (mitigation), has offered Cambridge City Manager Robert Healy a half-million dollar “contribution,” to be paid to the Manager and used at his complete discretion for whatever he wants, with the sole exception that it not be spent in East Cambridge. The payment would be to release them current owners from the obligation of the pedestrian walk, mitigation for an undone mitigation, I guess. (I remember being at a meeting of the Cambridge Conservation Commission or the Board of Zoning Appeal at which the owners said they didn’t want to provide the “mitigation” promised, i.e., the walkway.)
The owners cited security then and now. Heather says there is none at the plant. A group of 12 East Cambridge residents, probably members of the East Cambridge Planning Team, met at the plant and were alone there for 15 minutes while they searched for the person who was supposed to meet them there on the matter of the walkway.
Security consists of a closed gate and lock, when the plant’s owners remember to do that. Otherwise the thing is wide open.
Kathy Podgers asked a question about harborage and habitat for urban wildlife, and only Rizzo had any clue what she was talking about. Petrucelli told her after the meeting his family had had skunks under the porch, that they had had them removed, and now they have problems with squirrels.
Kathy pointed out the skunks would keep the squirrels away, but she says he still didn't understand. He seems part of the leadership, she said, and look where we are on protecting the environment.
Nevertheless I'll follow up with him on Magazine Beach and the DCR.
In the forum and afterwards Petrucelli pointed with pride to his help getting more money for the DCR. I told him I didn’t think giving the DCR more money would help anything. They use it not for maintenance of what they have but to keep Plans and its design-development constituents happy, at public expense.
He seemed aware of the DCR’s history of neglecting its assets, so as to be able to replace them at greater cost than what ordinary maintenance would cost. I pointed this is how the DCR services its design-development constituents, and also mobilizes public support for the survival of its own Planning group.
On reflection now I see DCR Plans works to identify itself in the public mind as the “good” DCR and is happy to let Maintenance, which Plans consistently underfunds so it can have its major development projects, be the “bad” DCR
Marilyn Wellons
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Destroyer Advocates Volunteers Planting Flowers on Magazine Beach
Bob La Trémouille Reports:
1. Bad Guy Gushes.
2. Reality.
3. Response of the Cambridgeport Listserve.
1. Bad Guy Gushes.
To: cport
From: Bad Guy [Anonymous name omitted to protect the guilty.]
Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 20:48:53 -0400
Subject: [cportneighbors] Park Serve Day, Magazine Beach, Sat., May 12, 9 a.m.
This Saturday, May 12, is Park Serve Day in Massachusetts. I thought many of you would be interested in a project taking place nearby and might like to participate:
Magazine Beach - 719 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
http://www.mass. gov/?pageID= gov3utilities&sid=Agov3&U=Agov3_park_ serve_listing# magazine
Park Description: Magazine Beach is a well-used active and passive recreation area along the Charles River in Cambridge. The parkland includes a small boat dock, a picnic area, two baseball fields, a swimming pool and a wading pool. This area is connected to the Cambridge neighborhoods by a footbridge over busy Memorial Dr.
Directions: Memorial Dr. is Rte. 3. Magazine Beach is located between Riverside Rd. and Magazine St.
MBTA bus #47.
Event Specifications:
Project: Plant flowers
Time: 9am-noon
Meeting location: Pool
Appropriate ages: 10 years and above
Partner: Cambridge Little League
Register Now
http://www.mass. gov/?pageID= gov3utilities&sid=Agov3&U=Agov3_park_ serve_registrati on
There are also numerous other parks that are participating. The full list is here:
http://www.mass. gov/?pageID= gov3utilities&sid=Agov3&U=Agov3_park_ serve_listing
Please don't harangue me about how planting flowers is code word for some insidious DCR goose destruction plan or how Magazine Beach is state-sanctioned historical inaccuracy.
__._,_.___
2. Reality.
[Ed: Limited edits made below to the response I sent to the censoring ListServe. I blind copied to the Free Cambridgeport List and to all Cambridge City Councilors.]
Sounds sort of like the "swim in" conducted a year after 9 city councilors started starving the Charles River White Geese. The "swim in" claimed that the heartless behavior of nine city councilors was justified by making swimming possible off Magazine Beach.
So the nine city councilors installed a wall of designer bushes which they called "native" and which had so little business on the Charles River that they kept dying. Finally the outrageously non-native "native" bushes took hold and created a wall BLOCKING SWIMMING.
Now a Little League "leader" is fighting for destruction of the balance of the animal habitat and even more outrageous and heartless starvation.
Why?
They want Little Leaguers to have the right to roll in poisons in a location which has been historically free of poisons. They want to starve animals that much more in an area which has been shared by animals until a really destructive city council and a bunch of blatant liars from the DCR behaved exactly the opposite of their propanda.
But the nine destructive city councilors are joining forces with proven liars at the DCR. The DCR says it wants "historical" uses on Memorial Drive, and in the opinion of the DCR, POISONS are historical in a location which has never seen poisons.
So don't look at the poisons to come. Don't look at the heartless behavior of nine hypocrites. Don't look at the fake downzoning of Memorial Drive which was, in reality, exactly the opposite of downzoning.
Don't look at the outrageous censoring of the Cambridgeport list to keep, as much as possible, people from knowing just how outrageously destructive nine city councilors and their friends are. Don't look at the suppression of negative comments about the friends of the censors, no matter how true the negative comments are. Don't look at the suppression of positive comments by the Cambridgeport list about those who live in reality, no matter how true the positive comments are.
Look at the lovely flowers. Look at the beautiful hypocrisies from very destructive people.
Look at the lovely words which so often are exactly the opposite of reality.
Look at a "Green" organization whose founders could give a damn less about aggressive destruction of the Green, but who love their fancy light bulbs.
Pass me a handkerchief.
3. Response of the Cambridgeport Listserve.
Last I heard, reality was censored.
1. Bad Guy Gushes.
2. Reality.
3. Response of the Cambridgeport Listserve.
1. Bad Guy Gushes.
To: cport
From: Bad Guy [Anonymous name omitted to protect the guilty.]
Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 20:48:53 -0400
Subject: [cportneighbors] Park Serve Day, Magazine Beach, Sat., May 12, 9 a.m.
This Saturday, May 12, is Park Serve Day in Massachusetts. I thought many of you would be interested in a project taking place nearby and might like to participate:
Magazine Beach - 719 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
http://www.mass. gov/?pageID= gov3utilities&sid=Agov3&U=Agov3_park_ serve_listing# magazine
Park Description: Magazine Beach is a well-used active and passive recreation area along the Charles River in Cambridge. The parkland includes a small boat dock, a picnic area, two baseball fields, a swimming pool and a wading pool. This area is connected to the Cambridge neighborhoods by a footbridge over busy Memorial Dr.
Directions: Memorial Dr. is Rte. 3. Magazine Beach is located between Riverside Rd. and Magazine St.
MBTA bus #47.
Event Specifications:
Project: Plant flowers
Time: 9am-noon
Meeting location: Pool
Appropriate ages: 10 years and above
Partner: Cambridge Little League
Register Now
http://www.mass. gov/?pageID= gov3utilities&sid=Agov3&U=Agov3_park_ serve_registrati on
There are also numerous other parks that are participating. The full list is here:
http://www.mass. gov/?pageID= gov3utilities&sid=Agov3&U=Agov3_park_ serve_listing
Please don't harangue me about how planting flowers is code word for some insidious DCR goose destruction plan or how Magazine Beach is state-sanctioned historical inaccuracy.
__._,_.___
2. Reality.
[Ed: Limited edits made below to the response I sent to the censoring ListServe. I blind copied to the Free Cambridgeport List and to all Cambridge City Councilors.]
Sounds sort of like the "swim in" conducted a year after 9 city councilors started starving the Charles River White Geese. The "swim in" claimed that the heartless behavior of nine city councilors was justified by making swimming possible off Magazine Beach.
So the nine city councilors installed a wall of designer bushes which they called "native" and which had so little business on the Charles River that they kept dying. Finally the outrageously non-native "native" bushes took hold and created a wall BLOCKING SWIMMING.
Now a Little League "leader" is fighting for destruction of the balance of the animal habitat and even more outrageous and heartless starvation.
Why?
They want Little Leaguers to have the right to roll in poisons in a location which has been historically free of poisons. They want to starve animals that much more in an area which has been shared by animals until a really destructive city council and a bunch of blatant liars from the DCR behaved exactly the opposite of their propanda.
But the nine destructive city councilors are joining forces with proven liars at the DCR. The DCR says it wants "historical" uses on Memorial Drive, and in the opinion of the DCR, POISONS are historical in a location which has never seen poisons.
So don't look at the poisons to come. Don't look at the heartless behavior of nine hypocrites. Don't look at the fake downzoning of Memorial Drive which was, in reality, exactly the opposite of downzoning.
Don't look at the outrageous censoring of the Cambridgeport list to keep, as much as possible, people from knowing just how outrageously destructive nine city councilors and their friends are. Don't look at the suppression of negative comments about the friends of the censors, no matter how true the negative comments are. Don't look at the suppression of positive comments by the Cambridgeport list about those who live in reality, no matter how true the positive comments are.
Look at the lovely flowers. Look at the beautiful hypocrisies from very destructive people.
Look at the lovely words which so often are exactly the opposite of reality.
Look at a "Green" organization whose founders could give a damn less about aggressive destruction of the Green, but who love their fancy light bulbs.
Pass me a handkerchief.
3. Response of the Cambridgeport Listserve.
Last I heard, reality was censored.
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