The following letter was published in the February 18, 2010 Cambridge Chronicle:
Editor
Cambridge Chronicle
Councilor Davis and Rep Walz have objected that the state’s meetings about the River Street and Western Avenue bridge repairs were held in Boston only, none in Cambridge.
In 2008, the state conducted three meetings about BU Bridge repairs on the BU campus and in Kendall Square. Those locations served to hide the accelerating, needless environmental destruction and heartless animal abuse in Cambridge from Cambridge residents. Now, at the River and Western bridges, the state does not have the same filthy hands.
In 2008 we objected to the state’s destructiveness and to their bad faith meetings. Davis and Walz were silent, "neutral" on both counts.
Why have they reversed themselves?
Silence is consent. Their failure to press for meetings in Cambridge indicated their approval of the animal abuse and destruction of the environment. This year they speak up to give the impression they care about the environment.
We suggest they begin to show real concern for the Charles River.
They can object to the poisons imported to Magazine Beach in commercial sod in 2008-09 and now required to keep the sickly grass there (including the seeded portions) alive. They can speak up for reseeding with the grasses and other plants that thrived there, untreated, for the better part of a century.
They can object to the DCR’s destruction of native plants along the Charles that protect migrating waterfowl. When the state destroyed those plants on the Boston side, the Boston Conservation Commission objected, but they were silent.
They’ve said human access to every foot of the riverfront is “sacred,” but they don’t object that the DCR has built a wall of plants that blocks access for thousands of feet, or that the DCR refuses to chop down only this portion of the riverfront for viewing the Head of the Charles. They’re silent on the inconsistency and on the DCR’s acknowledged reason for it: it keeps the Charles River White Geese from feeding there.
They should push the DCR to reverse this starvation policy and let the beautiful 30 year native Charles River White Geese return to their primary feeding grounds at Magazine Beach, rather than confining them to the devastated ghetto the DCR has created of their nesting area by the BU Bridge.
And why have these elected officials been silent on the DCR’s plans to destroy hundreds of trees and animal habitat along Memorial Drive? Silence is consent.
Robert J. La Trémouille and Marilyn Wellons
Co-CEO’s, Friends of the White Geese
651 Green Street
