1. General Background.
2. The City Manager’s Alewife “Protective” Group.
3. Their one “victory.”
4. Have they succeeded in destroying the core Alewife reservation?
5. The real record in Cambridge, with confirmation by judge, jury and appeals court.
6. Summary. Photos.
1. General Background.
The core Alewife reservation is an irreplaceable virgin woodlands within view of the Alewife (western) terminus of Boston’s Red Line subway and of the eastern terminus of Route 2, the northern of two superhighway systems connecting east and west in Massachusetts. It is teeming with wildlife.
Cambridge and its state accomplice, the Department of Conservation and Recreation, are highly destructive of the environment. Projects are too often so bizarre it is difficult to say they have any value except as pork.
Cambridge has been governed by two related city managers since 1974.
Cambridge’s worst dirty tricks have frequently been assisted by “citizen’s groups” which have undisclosed connections to the Cambridge City Manager.
I have 35 years experience fighting for the environment in Cambridge. I have major victories using zoning as a tool. I have forced votes out of the Cambridge City Council and won a majority of votes. The victories usually have been at the expense of the City Manager and of groups friendly to the Cambridge City Manager which do not clearly disclose the connection or of unnamed entities composed of the same people. Such groups have caused major harm to goals which are shared by a very significant part of the Cambridge electorate.
Working with various groups, my zoning changes have included downzoning of about 85% of Massachusetts Avenue between Harvard and Central Squares, and the restriction of a key parking lot between Alewife Station and Route 2 to open space. The further I have kept away from the City Manager groups, the greater has been my success.
2. The City Manager’s Alewife “Protective” Group.
A group claiming to be defending Alewife has spent perhaps 20 years running around claiming to be defending Alewife. Reality is that the group was telling people to defend everything except for the part owned by its friends. This group was created after discussions with the Cambridge City Manager’s people.
The actions of this group kept potential activists “out of trouble” by keeping them from focusing on the most valuable part of the Alewife reservation. The group told people to yell at private property owners in nearly impossible battles. They sounded great. They told people to keep away from proposed destruction of the most important part of the reservation, fight readily winnable because the Cambridge City Council claims to be a bunch of environmental saints.
3. Their one “victory.”
They seem to claim one victory during their existence. That victory looks like their taking credit for Sheila Cook's and my achievement.
In 2000 an effort led by Sheila Cook, using a zoning change written by me, restricted the use of the large parking lot between Alewife station and Route 2 to open space. About 5 years later, the owner obeyed the zoning. The supposed “protective” group treated Sheila Cook very badly for her downzoning and have since claimed sole credit for the implemention of and the obvious results of her downzoning. They do not mention the downzoning.
4. Have they succeeded in destroying the core Alewife reservation?
After 20 years loudly claiming to be defending Alewife but in reality defending everything in Alewife except for the portion owned by its friends, the group just went public supporting destruction of the major part of that core portion of the Alewife reservation owned by its friends. Destruction has already been accomplished on a distressingly large but “preliminary” area. Full scale destruction is expected to be actually accomplished in a month of clear cutting and logging commencing in October 2011.
The destruction is just as bizarre as too many prior examples of destruction in Cambridge. This excellent virgin native woods teeming with valuable wildlife is being destroyed for “flood storage.” The “flood storage” will protect against two year floods in an area which has seen two fifty year floods in the past 20 years.
Directly across the street from the target virgin woods is a massive parking lot, readily usable for flood storage and capable of holding a very large multiple of the two year storm drainage being created by Cambridge, the DCR, and their fake group.
5. The real record in Cambridge, with confirmation by judge, jury and appeals court.
The Cambridge City Council, pretty much non stop, proclaims its sainthood on the environment. The typical Cambridge voter wants a responsible city government. The Cambridge City Council’s claims of sainthood are flat out lies. They translate as: “I’m saving the world. How dare you object to my destruction of Cambridge." The Cambridge City Council is very vulnerable to communication of reality.
Projects by the two on the Charles River are comparably bizarre, displaying contempt for the environment and for the animal population. The governor may have stepped in to prevent use of Obama moneys for a massive tree destruction project. The DCR described all the trees as diseased. The DCR’s filing with the Cambridge Conservation Commission proved the DCR’s claims to be flat out lies. Flat out lies have been very much too common.
Within the past week, Cambridge has paid an $8.3 million judgment in the case of Monteiro v. Cambridge. In this case, jury, judge and appeals court found that the Cambridge City Manager destroyed the life of a black female Cape Verdean department head in retaliation for her filing a civil rights complaint. The jury said $3.5 million penal damages. The superior court judge summarized his testimony and behavior in the word “reprehensible.” The appeals court panel should its disgust by refusing to issue a formal opinion. They said “ample evidence [of] outrageous misbehavior.” But the Cambridge pols blithely run around praising the city manager and totally seem to be unaware of the informed opinions of judge, jury and appeals court on the Cambridge City Manager.
And those words/actions by judge, jury and appeals court sound strikingly like appropriate reactions to Cambridge’s environmental behavior.
6. Summary. Photos.
I have recently published on this blog a copy of a proposed op ed I have given to the Cambridge Chronicle responding to the fake protective group’s support of destruction of the core Alewife reservation after years of claims by them that they were defending Alewife. Since then, I have submitted a modified version which is more subtle. The words “lie” and “fake” were deleted, and “con game” was only used after I proved the con game a con game.
Here are two prior postings on this matter, providing key photographs:
http://charlesriverwhitegeeseblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/destruction-of-alewife-pre-cambridge.html. This is my report from July 28, 2011, providing photo of the “preliminary” destruction and a photo of the part of the massive parking lot across Cambridge Park Drive where the flood storage should be placed.
Please compare Google Maps, satellite view, for 100 Cambridge Park Drive in Cambridge, MA. This shows Alewife before this first stage logging and shows the full extent of that massive parking lot. It extends far beyond the area seen in the photograph, winding between large buildings, the commuter rail and Alewife Brook Parkway.
http://charlesriverwhitegeeseblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/large-alewife-parking-lot-returned-to.html. This goes into more detail about the parking lot saved by Sheila Cook and me, with photographs.
Alewife is savable. All that is necessary is for a Cambridge City Council which claims to be saints on environment issues to vaguely resemble their claims.
