A. Letter to Governor, Department of Conservation and Recreation and Cambridge Conservation Commission.
I. Introductory, formal opposition.
II. Proposed Resolution of Problem.
III. Project in Context.
i. Destroying all living beings on the Charles River.
ii. Specific facts, general.
iii. Specific facts.
iii. Application of specific facts.
IV. Responsible resolution.
V. Added issues.
1. Objection to recognition of “organization.”
2. Approach to interpretation of DCR Comments.
3. Example of “independent activity.”
B. Letter to Cambridge City Council.
Bob La Trémouille reports.
A. Letter to Governor, Department of Conservation and Recreation and Cambridge Conservation Commission.
I sent the following letter to the governor and the DCR on November 19, 2008. The identical letter was hand delivered to the Cambridge Conservation Commission on November 17, 2008. The identical letter except for the first paragraph was mailed to the Cambridge City Council on November 19, 2008. The first paragraph is provided below.
I am adding subdivisions (Roman Numerals) in accordance with the Internet format, and to make it more clear in this format.
I. Introductory, formal opposition.
November 19, 2008
Governor Leval Patrick
State House
Boston, MA 02133
RE: BU Bridge Reconstruction Project
Sir:
Please be advised of my opposition to the BU Bridge Reconstruction Project as currently proposed. I do think that the project can be accomplished with minimal responsible modifications to the proposal.
II. Proposed Resolution of Problem.
I propose:
1. Chop down the bizarre vegetated wall at Magazine Beach, as the DCR chops down useful vegetation everywhere else.
2. Return Magazine Beach to the historical green maintenance instead of chemicals and fertilizer and a new, expensive drainage system to drain the crap.
3. Kill the new, expensive drainage system at Magazine Beach. Green maintenance does not require this expenditure.
4. Let the White Geese return to Magazine Beach where they lived for 25 years.
5. Let them return to their nesting area, the location of the current proposal for environmental destruction, as they deem necessary.
6. Put the staging where it is environmentally responsible, under Memorial Drive.
7. To the extent this delays the current project, so be it. The DCR has scheduled things for maximum destruction. Minor delays for responsible behavior comport to the delays the DCR has already incurred in the area attempting to introduce vegetation at Magazine Beach which is unfit for planting on the Charles River.
8. Prohibit the continuation of destruction of protective vegetation lining the Charles River. Require twice annual chopping to one foot of the bizarre designer vegetation introduced at Magazine Beach, or, better use, require its removal. Prohibit the continued poisoning of the eggs of waterfowl.
III. Project in Context.
i. Destroying all living beings on the Charles River.
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.
ii. Specific facts, general.
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 new additions to the soil whether technically called “chemicals” or otherwise.
The DCR has denied any responsibility for the actions of its agent, Cambridge. The DCR is playing the DCR’s usual irresponsible game of saying don’t talk to me, talk to my coconspirator/agent. No way. It is all one package. It is all highly irresponsible. The denial of responsibility is yet another type of the very varied amount of lies we have seen from the DCR over the past nine years.
iii. Specific facts.
A summary of the record:
In September 2004, the DCR and Cambridge simultaneously walled off the Charles River White Geese from all of their food.
The DCR destroyed access at Magazine Beach with the construction zone followed by the bizarre wall of introduced vegetation. At a public meeting during the past week, a DCR representative bragged that this bizarre wall prevents the feeding of the Charles River White Geese. The bizarre wall of vegetation directly violates the so-called Charles River Master Plan.
Cambridge destroyed access at the BU Boathouse and across from the Hyatt Regency by installing a wall of plastic between the Charles River and the grass.
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. This is the only portion of their habitat that DCR and Cambridge did not bar them from in 2004.
So pretty much all of the world of the Charles River White Geese was simultaneously destroyed to them, and they would now 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.
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.
This has been followed up by the demand of the DCR at the recent meeting in Boston that the Charles River White Geese find temporary housing while this latest destruction is inflicted on them. This is the sort of sick mentality by which man is destroying our world, compounded by the obvious stupidity of the demand, given their proven attachment to their home of nearly 30 years, and the high likelihood that the DCR would happily kill them if they did move.
iii. Application of specific facts.
The heartlessness of this latest attack is compounded by the simultaneous and totally needless conversion of Magazine Beach, the primary habitat of the Charles River White Geese, 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.
IV. Responsible resolution.
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 maintenance 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, and the resumption of this wasteful destruction should be prohibited. Mr. Corsi at a meeting last week essentially bragged that this wall is starving the Charles River White Geese in response to a question.
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
V. Added issues.
ADDENDUM:
1. Objection to recognition of “organization.”
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 group calls itself something like “liveable streets coalition.” It is a highway organization with goals too close to those of the Cambridge City Manager. 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.
2. Approach to interpretation of DCR Comments.
The level of lying and the variation of the techniques of lying by the DCR over the past nine years has been nothing less than incredible.
I believe nothing that the DCR says that would help them in their quest for the destruction of all living beings on the Charles River.
At its last discussion of this matter, the Conservation Commission questioned why the DCR has not conducted public meetings on this matter with its major harm to Cambridge. The DCR with entirely unsurprising bad faith conducted a meeting on the BU campus and invited a whole bunch of developer types. They did not conduct their meeting in a location convenient for Cambridge residents who are concerned about the DCR’s belligerent lack of responsible behavior.
One flat out lie from the Boston meeting has been abandoned: that the vegetation needlessly being destroyed for staging is larger than the area available under the BU Bridge. The latest explanation (and the DCR keeps on varying explanations) is that the excess destruction is for convenience. The DCR brags that the DCR is too lazy to cross one and a half lanes of traffic for their staging.
The other flat out lie from the Boston meeting seems to continue: This is the bizarre lie that the Charles River White Geese WILL find temporary housing as justification for the needless destruction of their homes.
I anticipate that the “expert” who made this bizarre statement will plead stupidity.
“Oh, you mean there is a difference between the White Geese and the Canadas?”
Claiming to be this stupid after being introduced as an expert is another variety of flat out lying.
The Canadas are migratory.
The White Geese are permanent residents for nearly 30 years and have remained in their devastated habitat after the outrages of 2004 and after the ongoing destruction of ground vegetation in their consigned ghetto.
That very major attachment to their home of nearly 30 years says everything and proves the comparison to Canadas to be a flat out lie.
I anticipate that the DCR’s “expert” will brag that the DCR’s “expert” does not understand the difference.
3. Example of “independent activity.”
In the Boston meeting, I was shouted down by a person known to be a friend of the DCR and Cambridge when I attempted to respond to the above analyzed two outrageous lies of the DCR.
There are too many friends of the DCR and Cambridge running around falsely claiming to be independent.
I consider the activities of such people and their claims of being “independent” just another technique of lying.
B. Letter to Cambridge City Council.
The letter to the Cambridge City Council was identical except for the first paragraph which reads as follows:
**************
Please be advised of my opposition to the BU Bridge Reconstruction Project as currently proposed. Your actions are part of the problem. The project can be accomplished with minimal responsible modifications to the proposal.
**************
The agenda for the next meeting, November 24, 2008, is posted on line. The letter is not included. So, I anticipate it was not received in time. Not terribly surprising, I anticipate it will be on the following week’s agenda.
