The Cambridge, MA, USA Machine is stepping up its fight for destruction on the Charles River. They are using the usual tactic. They are claiming broad concern and telling concerned people to look at everything except the important stuff. A company union to the core.
The latest nonsense was printed in the April 4, 2013, Cambridge Chronicle.
I have proposed two possible responses. One is a 400 word letter to the editor. The second is the following proposed op ed:
************
I see a another letter telling people to look at the bathhouse at Magazine Beach and look at nothing else on the Charles River.
In January, the writer’s front organization conducted a meeting on whether the environmental destruction on the Magazine Beach playing fields would be expanded to the bathhouse area and further west.
There was very real question as to whether they would be able to get approval for the DCR’s expansion of environmental destruction. So they postponed the matter to the February meeting. The February meeting is now scheduled for the end of April.
It would appear that the “underpass” proposal they have supported is being funded with a bond request proposed by the governor for the “underpasses”. Incidentally mentioned is a highway proposal in the package which would have 12 times the money as the “underpasses”. The highway, kept as secret as possible, of course, would destroy wetlands, destroy portions of the Charles River, destroy hundreds of trees between the BU Bridge and the Longfellow Bridge, and achieve further animal abuse.
The author is telling people to look at only the bathhouse. But, she sought to ram through approval of the expansion of Magazine Beach destruction in her front organization’s January meeting. The approval would include part of the governor’s highway project. During the meeting, she backed down on supporting destruction of the commendable little parking lot at the end of Magazine Street.
The Machine looked like it could lose the vote. So the matter was deferred to its February meeting.
The tree destruction has never been publicly mentioned as part of the “underpass” project. The irresponsible highway stood a very strong chance of defeat with the rest of the Magazine Beach destruction expansion package.
So it is fascinating to see the February meeting and the vote delayed to the end of April. Could this give the bond bill a better chance for approval?
The group claims it supports all approaches to “improvement” of Magazine Beach, but its “history” of Magazine Beach very belligerently omits the environmental outrages of the last 13 years.
The group insists people concerned about Magazine Beach ignore matters which were achieved without meaningful public notice during the past 13 years. These actions achieved directly contradicted the words and public announcements used to describe the project. The problems they do not want to know about are the significant problems at Magazine Beach.
Problems they do not want to know about include:
1. Destruction of healthy grass at Magazine Beach to plant sickly stuff which needs poisons to survive. They support expansion of this outrage to the west.
2. Destruction of playing fields to drain off the poisons. More such destruction will come to the west.
3. Walling off Magazine Beach from the water with a bizarre wall of introduced bushes. This is likely to be expanded in the western extension of the playing fields outrage.
4. Heartlessly starving the Charles River White Geese by taking away their food for most of the last 32 years.
5. Destruction of the boat dock at Magazine Beach.
6. The Governor’s east west highway which would be built in the expansion of Magazine Beach destruction and which currently exists on the Playing Fields. The former boat dock opening is for the construction of the new highway, in the Charles under the BU Bridge.
7. The City Council’s north south highway to be built through the Destroyed Nesting Area east of the BU Bridge. A responsible city government would connect to Vassar Street and Memorial Drive behind the building on the corner instead of going under Memorial Drive through a longer route, and destroying, destroying, destroying.
8. Use of the undestroyed part of the DNA for parking.
9. Another bizarre barrier of unclipped introduced bushes now growing in half the DNA, to be expanded to the entire DNA.
10. Plans to wall off the DNA from the hill to its west with a new fence as part of the City Council’s north-south highway.
But the Cambridge Machine does love to tell you not to look at anything other than the bathhouse.
On the Charles River, the Cambridge Machine is following its own its own success in massing destruction and animal killing at Alewife. There they continue to tell folks to look at everything but the destruction by Cambridge and the DCR. And the machine fights for expansion there by telling concerned folks to yell at developers instead of an irresponsible city government which should be working with developers and building flood protection under buildings in the works.
Nevertheless the Cambridge Machine will, constantly, tell you they are holier than thou.
