1. General.
2. Letter to Cambridge Chronicle.
3. Summary.
1. General.
The following letter has been submitted to the Cambridge Chronicle in response to a series of versions of a report by the Chronicle on a fund raiser concerning private property at the Alewife reservation.
The most recent version of the report is at http://www.wickedlocal.com/cambridge/news/x1341770199/Concert-raises-money-for-the-Silver-Maple-Forest#ixzz1m7JJl1QC. It is quite a bit shorter than the other versions. Sorry. This is the best I can see.
2. Letter to Cambridge Chronicle.
Editor
Cambridge Chronicle
I appreciate your “Silver Maple Forest” report.
For nearly 15 years, a group “defending” Alewife told people who were concerned about Alewife to protect the “Silver Maple Forest.” That group said not to look at the inexcusable and in fact downright bizarre environmental destruction being accomplished at Alewife by Cambridge and by Massachusetts’ Department of Conservation and Recreation, which owns the core Alewife reservation.
A few months ago, these entities accomplished the first stage of destruction. They bragged about “flood storage” their destruction cannot achieve. They brag about needed flood storage which can be achieved on the other side of the adjoining CambridgePark Drive.
The destruction so far can protect against two year floods (the worst flooding in any two year period). Alewife has seen two fifty year floods in the past twenty years.
The needed protection can be provided by taking the massive parking lot across CambridgePark Drive or by further destruction of the reservation. The flood protection should be placed under office buildings whose construction in that parking lot is imminent. The alternative is a doubling, tripling or more of destruction of the irreplaceable woodlands.
The key “activist” has gone from “defending” Alewife to bragging about the destruction of the core Alewife reservation. The “defending” group which is now visible does not even use the word “Alewife” in its name.
Your report describes “Silver Maple Forest” in glowing terms. Those glowing terms describe the destroyed area and the phase 2 destruction as well. Total public destruction will easily be much larger than the destruction at this privately owned long shot at “Silver Maple.”
If Cambridge had a responsible city government, that massive parking lot would be taken by eminent domain and used for the flood protection needed. The imminent office buildings would be built on top of the flood storage. The inexcusable strip mine which replaced an irreplaceable woodlands would be given back to nature to undo damage which should never have been done.
Instead we see people fighting Don Quixote fights who do not want to see the bizarre and totally avoidable destruction a hundred or so feet away. They destroy their own credibility by their indifference.
Cambridge and its friends keep the good guys “out of trouble” by having them chase their tails. They keep up the lie that they are environmental saints. How dare you object to totally wasteful environmental destruction. Cambridge pols sound great!
3. Summary.
Please note that the Cambridge Conservation Commission will be discussing the office project slated for that massive parking lot on the fourth floor of City Hall Annex at Broadway and Inman Monday, February 13, at 7:15 pm.
The bragging about the destruction was done by Ellen Mass to a non profit which calls itself “Greenport” on January 18 at the church on the corner of Brookline Street and Putnam Avenue. The related “Cambridgeport Neighborhood Association” has spent years telling people who are concerned about Alewife to go to the fake Friends group.
Since the destruction of the core Alewife reservation the “Cambridgeport Neighborhood Association” has started strongly denying that Alewife is any proper interest of their group.
The “Cambridgeport Neighborhood Association” has joined the falsely named Charles River Conservancy in creating a group for Magazine Beach which stinks of the “Friends of the Alewife Reservation” group.
The “Friends of Alewife Reservation” now seems to have disappeared with its success in destruction of the core Alewife reservation.
