This morning, I submitted the following to Governor Patrick at his email comment form.
If you would like to do something comparable. His email comment form is posted at: http://www.mass.gov/governor/constituentservices/contact, His office may be contacted by telephone at 888-870-7770
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RE: Environmental Bond Bill - “Historical Parkways”
Dear Governor Patrick:
I write to you individually and as chair of Friends of the White Geese, a non profit recognized by the Attorney General since 2001.
I strongly encourage you to line item veto that portion of the Environmental Bond Bill applicable to the so called Historical Parkways proposal.
The extreme lack of merit of this initiative is notable from the silence which has been associated with its proposal and the dishonesty of its supporters.
The most blatant dishonesty comes in the name. The “Historical Parkways” program destroys hundreds of excellent trees on Memorial Drive between the BU and Longfellow Bridges, along with animal habitat. Attacks on resident animals are consistent with the reprehensible goal of the DCR to kill off or drive away as many resident animals as it can get away with.
The entity which has been most publicly associated with this outrage obtained signatures under false pretenses, and bragged of those false pretenses when it announced getting this outrage into the bill. According to the falsely named Charles River “Conservancy,” $24 million of destruction of trees is “incidental to” $4 million of underpasses, which are in turn opposed by the responsible agency, MassDOT as environmentally destructive, among other things.
When this outrage morphed into H4009, section 2C, 2890-7020, it went from extremely vague to clearly listed, with a price tag of $32 million.
The DCR’s plans from 2009 are posted at http://charlesriverwhitegeeseblog.blogspot.com/2014/06/h4009-destruction-of-hundreds-of-trees.html. You will note that, in spite of the lies put out to the Boston Globe in 2009 that all targeted trees were diseased, there are no diseased trees. I have interspersed with pages of the plans a photo of the excellent grove at the Memorial Drive split which the DCR wants to devastate as part of this outrage.
An excellent example of the corruption of the DCR is their preceding work at Magazine Beach in which all of the important changes are either exactly the opposite of their promises or were simply kept secret, as has been the current funding.
The promises with regard to the 33 year resident and very popular tourist attraction, the Charles River White Geese ,were and continue to be as follows: the promises were “no intent to harm.”
So naturally, the DCR and Cambridge proceeded to starve them with a starvation wall of introduced vegetation blocking access to their food at Magazine Beach. That wall directly violates with a promise in the “Charles River Master Plan” of a lawn to the river, and constant insistence by the DCR that it would allow nothing but water related activities. The DCR, after the fact, rewrote the promises in the “Charles River Master Plan.”
The DCR promised improvements to the Magazine Beach playing fields which they divorced from the water. The DCR reduced the size of the playing fields to drain off poisons they proceeded to dump on the Magazine Beach playing fields to keep alive introduced sickly grasses. The introduced sickly grasses replaced responsible grasses which were there for the better half of a century, and which continue to exist west of the playing fields. The responsible grasses do not need poisons. One of the DCR’s next goals is to destroy what is left of the responsible grasses.
The DCR attacks on the Charles River White Geese and other resident animals have continued incidental to whatever they are doing in the area at any particular time.
Please show respect for the environment.
Please kill this reprehensible project.
Thank you.
PS: The falsely named Charles River “Conservancy” was announced several months after the first efforts of the Friends of the White Geese. In between our creation and their creation, we discredited their predecessor. The most recent efforts of one related organization have been to tell people that it is anti Charles River to defend the Charles River. The related organization tells people to look at nothing but a building that has been abandoned for 80 years that they want to convert to retail.
