Bob La Trémouille reports:
1. Introduction.
2. My letter.
a. Introductory
b. Objections to farcical scheduling.
c. Project must be considered as part of massive environmental destruction ongoing by DCR.
d. Starving the Charles River White Geese, Destroying green maintenance at Magazine Beach, creation of mudpit, poisoning feeding birds with chemicals.
e. Destruction of ground vegetation between BU Bridge and BU Boathouse.
f. Combination is extreme and deliberate cruelty.
g. Achieved through flat out lies.
h. What should be done.
i. Objection to front organization for Cambridge City Manager being treated as anything other than a front organization for the Cambridge City Manager.
3. DCR’s Response, the usual flat out lies.
a. Let them move and come back.
b. We have to destroy the nesting area for staging. There is more room there than under Memorial Drive.
1. Introduction.
The DCR conducted its “public meeting” on Cambridge damage in Boston on the Boston University campus on October 16, 2008.
The DCR publicized the meeting to developer types and introduced the meeting with a total development mentality with environmental considerations solely related to the project’s water gathering abilities.
2. My letter.
I submitted the following letter. I have added subdivisions to comport to blog format.
a. Introductory
October 16, 2008
Department of Conservation and Recreation
251 Causeway Street, Suite 600
Boston, MA 02114-2104
RE: BU Bridge Reconstruction Project
Gentlemen/Ladies:
This evening you are conducting a “public hearing” IN BOSTON to respond to a suggestion by the CAMBRIDGE Conservation Commission that you conduct a public hearing concerning the very major environmental destruction you propose IN CAMBRIDGE as part of the project.
b. Objections to farcical scheduling.
Please be advised that conducting a public hearing concerning CAMBRIDGE destructiveness in BOSTON is nothing less than outrageous. As such, it fits the long record of bad behavior by the DCR on Charles River matters affecting Cambridge during the past nine years.
c. Project must be considered as part of massive environmental destruction ongoing by DCR.
This project is most definitely NOT free standing but is carefully coordinated to fit in with directly related environmental destruction efforts by the DCR. The coordination should be modified to minimize environmental destruction. Currently, the coordination maximizes environmental destruction.
The DCR is in the process of destroying all living beings on the Charles River, either directly or indirectly through destroying their ecosystem. The goal is to replace a viable and mixed ecosystem with a dead ecosystem. A balance of nature is being replaced with a suburban lawn. And a lot of lying has been and continues to be used in that regard. The important lie in this project is the claim that the project is independent of the DCR’s many other environmental outrages in the area.
Key in this project’s link to environmental destruction is deliberate and cumulative harm to the local animal and vegetation population.
d. Starving the Charles River White Geese, Destroying green maintenance at Magazine Beach, creation of mudpit, poisoning feeding birds with chemicals.
In 2004-2005, the DCR took their food away from the Charles River White Geese by destroying the wetlands at Magazine Beach and replacing that wetlands with an introduced wall of bushes blocking access from the Charles River to most of Magazine Beach.
The DCR and Cambridge have just expanded on that destruction by digging up all the grass at Magazine Beach, the 25 year food and habitat of the Charles River White Geese. The grass has been replaced with a mudpit. It is the intention of the DCR and Cambridge to poison that grass with chemicals.
In September 2004, the DCR and Cambridge simultaneously walled off the Charles River White Geese from all of their food. The DCR did that at Magazine Beach with the construction zone followed by the bizarre wall of introduced vegetation. Cambridge did that east of the BU Boathouse and across from the Hyatt Regency by installing a wall of plastic.
e. Destruction of ground vegetation between BU Bridge and BU Boathouse.
In the past five years, the DCR through its agents has destroyed every piece of ground vegetation between the BU Bridge and the BU Boathouse except for the vegetation in the core nesting area just east of the BU Bridge which this project proposes to destroy.
f. Combination is extreme and deliberate cruelty.
So all of the world of the Charles River White Geese was simultaneously destroyed to them, and they would be confined to an artificially created (by the DCR) mudpit in one quarter of their nesting area in place of the mile long habitat centered on the BU Bridge where they lived until September 2004.
This extreme and deliberate cruelty is inexcusable.
g. Achieved through flat out lies.
Its importance is emphasized by the flat out lie that the DCR put out about the Charles River White Geese starting in 2000, repeatedly stated and continuing even after the DCR and its agents / associates imposed starvation and deprival of habitat in 2004:
The promise that the DCR would do no harm to the Charles River White Geese.
The heartlessness of this latest attack is compounded by the simultaneous and totally needless conversion of Magazine Beach, their primary habitat, into a mudpit.
The combination of the two projects destroys the little that was not destroyed in September 2004, AND prevents immediate conversion of Magazine Beach to use Magazine Beach as the nine month home of the Charles River White Geese, which is the proper nine month residence of the Charles River white Geese anyway.
h. What should be done.
The DCR’s priorities in the BU Bridge area should be reversed.
Use of and destruction of the nesting area for staging should be prohibited. Staging under Memorial Drive is good for the sidewalk project. It should be good for the Memorial Bridge project.
If use of the staging area under Memorial Drive delays the project, that is the fault of the DCR.
Instead of timing the project to maximize animal harm, it should be timed to minimize animal harm. The totally unnecessary destruction of Magazine Beach to replace green maintenance with chemical should be stopped in its tracks. GREEN seeding of grass should be resumed. The bizarre massive athletic complex should be killed and fields with athletics on top of it should resume.
Instead of the DCR’s current semi-annual destruction of valuable native ground vegetation twice a year everywhere on the Charles below the Watertown dam, the protective vegetation should be allowed to resume.
The bizarre INTRODUCED wall of vegetation walling off Magazine Beach should be chopped to the ground and removed instead of the semi-annual destruction of useful vegetation.
The total destruction of ground vegetation between the BU Bridge and the BU Boathouse should be reversed by normal seeding. The tiny portion that has not been destroyed should not be destroyed except for that area next to the BU Bridge needed for the BU Bridge project.
Once Magazine Beach once again becomes fit to use and the destroyed vegetation between the BU Bridge and the BU Boathouse is returned to normal, the Charles River White Geese should be allowed to resume their migratory lifestyle within their mile long habitat centered on the BU Bridge, spending most of their life at Magazine Beach in A HEALTHY GREEN environment, with nesting at the destroyed nesting area only interrupted insofar as necessary to do the work on the BU Bridge within 25 feet of the BU Bridge for the most part, less near the water.
To the extent the current irresponsible timing is impacted by responsible behavior, that is the fault of the DCR for proposing irresponsible timing.
Sincerely,
Robert J. La Trémouille
i. Objection to front organization for Cambridge City Manager being treated as anything other than a front organization for the Cambridge City Manager.
ADDENDUM:
It is my understanding that a purported citizens group created by an employee of the Cambridge City Manager will be approaching the board claiming some sort of independent existence and not informing the board of its connection to the Cambridge City Manager.
Please note my objections to the claimed independent status of this group and to its very destructive goals.
This is a highway organization. It is fighting for a new highway which would destroy approximately 83 out of the 110 trees located between the Hyatt and the Memorial Drive split. It is also supporting destruction of the Nesting Area for a similar highway connecting to the railroad bridge.
I condemn these outrageous proposals and I condemn the tactics behind these proposals.
The Cambridge City Manager is a co-conspirator with the DCR in the destruction of the environment of the Charles River. The Cambridge City Manager’s supposed independent organization is fighting for his very destructive cause.
The Cambridge City Council will hopefully fire the Cambridge City Manager because of a jury verdict finding heartless behavior in a civil rights matter, $1 + million damages, $3.5 million punitive damages.
If the Cambridge City Council behaves in a responsible manner, perhaps we will see fewer of these supposed citizen’s groups with undisclosed connections to the Cambridge City Manager.
3. DCR’s Response, the usual flat out lies.
Two of the usual flat out lies. I responded simply by calling them nonsense. I had been maneuvered away from the microphone and was not in a position to directly respond.
a. Let them move and come back.
This flat out lie was presented by a self-described animal expert.
I have responded to that in a letter to the Daily Free Press printed below at http://charlesriverwhitegeeseblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/let-them-move-and-come-back.html.
b. We have to destroy the nesting area for staging. There is more room there than under Memorial Drive.
Interestingly, the DCR waived an argument they had previously used. They previously claimed they could not put staging under Memorial Drive because it would be used by the contractor repairing BU Bridge sidewalks.
First of all, there is plenty of additional room there for a second contractor.
Secondly, the BU Bridge project is now being staged so that it will not be done simultaneously with the sidewalk project.
The staging would destroy EXACTLY an area south of the Memorial Drive on ramp which the sidewalk project had previously promised to destroy.
Apparently, the DCR has decided the sidewalk project is inadequate excuse for destroying that area and is using this excuse.
Eyeballing the two sites on Google Maps provides the rapid analysis that the level of this flat out lie is simply incredible. Eyeballing the two sites indicates that the space under Memorial Drive is something like four to eight times as large as the area they propose to destroy in the nesting area.
Flat out lies, business as usual from the DCR.
