Bob La Trémouille reports:
Ebersol Fields on the Charles River near Massachusetts General Hospital is the state's precursor to the outrage in the process at Magazine Beach in Cambridge.
On Wednesday, July 9, 2008, the Boston Globe printed an excellent article on this magnificent and unused part of the Charles River.
Marilyn Wellons sent out the following letter to the editor to the Boston Globe in response early in the morning on July 10:
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re: "Build it and they may not come," July 9, 2008.
Commissioner Sullivan’s Department of Conservation and Recreation and Cambridge are poised to repeat the errors of Ebersol Fields at Magazine Beach in Cambridge next month.
Restricted access to the playing fields there is imminent. At Cambridge’s expense, professional-level facilities will be constructed on state parkland now open to everyone. In return, Cambridge users will get privileged access. The DCR will advertise the project in two weeks for work to start in August.
A DCR official has stated that to maintain the “quality of turf our players deserve,” Ebersol Fields must get not only fertilizers but other chemicals, including a fungicide not to be applied near bodies of water. The agency has duly applied them. Runoff from these chemicals—organic or not—has fed astronomical algae blooms in the lower Charles since Ebersol Fields were installed in the spring of 2006. Now Cambridge and the DCR are bringing the algae to Magazine Beach. (For this we’ve spent $60 million to clean up the Charles?)
At Ebersol Fields, the donors’ good intentions and funds were diverted from the real needs of children in Boston neighborhoods to this blunder in the beautiful setting. The project at Magazine Beach repeats the error in Cambridge.
