Bob La Trémouille reports:
I have just released the following press release:
PRESS RELEASE, October 7, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Bob La Trémouille, 617-283-7649, Marilyn Wellons 617-354-3858, charlesriverwhitegeese@yahoo.com
RE: Cambridge City Council and DCR Destroy Magazine Beach
On Monday, October 6, the peace at Magazine Beach on the Charles River in Cambridge was once again disrupted by massive earth moving equipment.
The earth that water fowl have fed on for more than 50 years was dug up and placed in piles.
This is the latest step in the destruction of living beings on the Charles River by the Department of Conservation and Recreation and nine Cambridge City Councilors.
This particular action is intended to replace green maintenance of Magazine Beach with chemical maintenance. The nine city councilors have never specifically justified the destruction at Magazine Beach. According to activists, it is part of a pattern which includes an ongoing project at Fresh Pond which is apparently destroying thousands of healthy trees and a project at Alewife which would destroy the Alewife reservation for flood storage which should go under a parking lot 500 feet to the south.
The project at Magazine Beach will destroy seven acres of perfectly good dirt and grass and replace the seven acres of dirt and grass with seven acres of dirt, grass, and chemicals. The chemicals will poison the eggs of water fowl feeding at Magazine Beach and poison kids rolling around in the poison.
The last such project by the DCR was at Ebersol Fields on the Charles near Mass. General. At Ebersol Fields, their beloved chemicals did not work, so the DCR added Tartan in spite of prohibitions near water. The next day the Charles River was dead from the harbor to the Mass. Ave. Bridge with annually recurring algae.
A bizarre wall of vegetation was installed at Magazine Beach, blocking access to the Charles River. It was installed by the two groups in 2004-2005. The DCR’s agents bragged that this solid wall would help swimming. The DCR explained their taking their food, the grass at Magazine Beach, from the Charles River White Geese after four years of DCR promises that the Charles River White Geese would not be harmed: The DCR explained that starving the Charles River White Geese is not harming them.
For five years the DCR’s agents have been destroying vegetation protecting migrating birds throughout the Charles River below the Watertown dam.
For five years, the DCR’s agents have been poisoning as many eggs of waterfowl as they can get away with in the same part of the Charles River.
During the past five years, the DCR’s agents have destroyed the vast majority of ground vegetation between the BU Bridge and the BU Boathouse,. This is the ghetto where the DCR and Cambridge have consigned the Charles River White Geese. Useful vegetation is massively destroyed. The bizarre wall at Magazine Beach keeps growing.
Soon to come BU Bridge reconstruction is planned to destroy what little ground vegetation has not been destroyed between the BU Bridge and the BU Boathouse. The project as announced is planned with maximum and unnecessary cruelty to resident animals, following upon eight years of vile behavior toward resident animals.
One Cambridge city councilor, Samuel Seidel has publicly bragged that environmental destruction shows Cambridge’s enlightened version of environmentalism. That analysis may be viewed at http://charlesriverwhitegeeseblog.blogspot.com/2007_05_29_archive.html.
A public hearing on the BU Bridge project has been announced by the DCR for Thursday, October 16, at 6 to 8 pm, at 871 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 129, in Boston. A public hearing was requested by the Cambridge Conservation Commission at its discussion of the project in early September. The DCR apparently is responding to the Cambridge request with a Boston hearing.
The Cambridge Conservation Commission may formally consider the BU Bridge proposal at their October 20, meeting at 7 pm on the fourth floor of the Cambridge City Hall Annex, Broadway and Inman Streets in Cambridge.
Prepared by Robert J. La Trémouille
