1. Analysis on the Ground ‒ Introduction.
2. July 3, 2018
3. July 5, 2018
4. July 10, 2018.
5. My observations, July 7, 2018.
6. Phil’s History, 7/13/18.
7. Summary.
A. Four more photos.
(1) The most visible victims of so many of the pretty much nonstop outrages.
(2) More recent photos of the poison drainage ditch under attack.
(3) Results - pool of algae.
B. The latest con.
8. What the Cambridge City Council should do.
1. Analysis on the Ground ‒ Introduction.
On July 3, 2018, Phil reported to me on further, SECRET, destruction on Magazine Beach. The Cambridge City Council sought appointment of a committee dominated by proven environmental destroyers and told them to go to work. The Cambridge City Council used code words which were used by the more visible destroyers when they fought for the successful destruction of hundreds of trees between the BU Bridge and the Longfellow Bridge. The woman designated as the City Council’s Absolute Dictator on Charles River matters is included in the stacked committee. She fought for that destruction, with others working with her, using Company Union techniques.
The City Council kept SECRET this outrage, totally empowering these destroyers to destroy at will.
In Cambridge, MA, the Cambridge City Council constantly brags about its actions and stretches them out with magnificent language and “meetings.” When they are ashamed of what they are doing, they do it as secretly as possible. The language used by Councilor Devereux, with no council objection, named a proven enviromental destroyer as the City Council’s absolute dictator on environmental matters.
So we are getting behavior with a true stench, especially when dealing with the very real hypocrisy on the Cambridge City Council.
“SHE MADE ME DO IT!” is the usual fraudulent explanation.
The motion for secret action mentioned a bike path which, horrors, had sections 4 feet wide between Pleasant Street (west of the planned tree destruction zone) to the BU Bridge.
After Phil’s report, I checked on the ground in the total tree destruction area. ALL of the bike way / pedestrian path looks like four feet to me.
The Absolute Dictator of the Cambridge City Council seems to have been separated (abandoned?) from a lot of her more visible accomplices during her fight for the outrageous destruction in January 2016. Our video on that destruction may be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTplCCEJP7o.
Here are Phil’s July 3, 2018 report and two others, along with photos showing the history of the poison drainage areas.
I have done some editing. The “Young Mormons” Phil refers to are a religious group which apparently volunteered for responsible work, and like so many people in Cambridge who want to be responsible, got roped into destructive behavior instead.
I will comment in brackets as appropriate.
2. July 3, 2018
They propose something inside the fence, was it. That is where there are many fine trees indeed. There may be 4 feet between them and the fence in places. Bikers just “share” the present sidewalk with walkers, runners and joggers along Mem Drive. It is a pain to navigate on foot, haveing to be constantly on the alert for fast-moving [bicyclists].
The sand path along the starvation wall turns into a barely negotiable muddy track after a rain, worse since there are no reeds to absorb the water. It was better when it was paved, before things got “improved”. No present practical bike access there, tho I did see a fellow take a moped down it the other week.
I made one false start toward the river and turned back in the heat. I feel restless enough to take another crack at it in a while. Always a nice breeze along the river, if I make it that far.
P.S. I see on the MB website that they recruited 120 Mormon teenagers to tear out the reeds last week.
[Phil noted a photo of City Councilor Devereux and other on the fake protectors website. The photo was bragging about the sign for the secret work which is being performed in the only opening in the Starvation Wall ‒ the boat dock of the 20th Century destroyed by being blocked in the outrages of the late 2000's.]
3. July 5, 2018
I finally got to MB on the 4th. The Young Mormons accomplished surprisingly little for their strength of numbers. Two very small areas near the path that had already been denuded of the naturally occurring reeds were planted with grasses and other plants, and that was about all.
There are a number of new signs scattered about bearing the DCR logo advertising the wonderful results to follow their efforts to make the bad plants go away.
Some of the natural flowering plants have been coming back nicely around the hacked over areas. The greenery has just exploded in the week or so since I’ve had time to get down there. The saplings they cut down earlier in the season are densely regenerating from the stumps.
Is there any concrete proposal for where this bike path might be sited? It occurs to me that I have seen a new one along the river in Watertown that was installed in the past few years. It runs along the road while the pedestrian path is along the riverbank. I have a good friend there so have walked that stretch of the river often over almost twenty years. The naturally wooded area there was unfortunately stripped of its understory, but dividing the path so you don’t have to dodge speedy idiots on bikes is working.
4. July 10, 2018.
Hope U R well. I noted the other day on one of the new signs they set up claim that the recessed areas were seeded with wildflowers back in 2009 when they were finally ready. I’m combing through my photo archives as I don’t recall this to be true. There was never anything but grass in both originally, save for the shrubs they planted on the embankment of the one nearest the cottonwoods [western of the two poisons drainage ditches] and some hardy plants that self-seeded on the slopes of them. I will have more on this as I find the visual documentation.
I did notice in 2008 photos that both areas were literally ponds during the construction phase. The one drains into the other, so no reeds ever colonized it, but in the wetter one the cattails first appeared near the connecting culvert, then moved through the whole area. The “bad” reeds began at that corner too and eventually displaced the others in the original area, back furthest from the pathway.
5. My observations, July 7, 2018.
I leafleted a DCR / Absolute Dictator / Cambridge City Council celebration on July 7, trying to communicate reality in place of nonsense.
We how have our presentation of destruction plans to the Cambridge City Council in our letter of June 6, 2018 on our website at http://focrwg.com/agenda1.pdf.
I was thus able to connect the tree and destruction reports on the flier with the detailed reports received by and ignored by the destructive Cambridge City Council.
The flier worked extremely well with the event because one of the signs Phil reports being put up at the poison rerouting location is truly stupid, and very much false in its absence of the very terrible things the DCR and the City Council’s Absolute Dictator are doing.
It was a bunch of pleasant discussions.
Included in the discussions were people under the magnificent willow the Cambridge City Council and the DCR want to destroy.
The doomed and excellent willow is close to the location of the fake celebrations, and between that location and the poison drainage area work which is rerouting poisons into the Charles.
It is impossible to fully communicate the horror of the massive tree destruction on a flier.
It is possible to communicate the poison rerouting.
6. Phil’s History, 7/13/18.
[Ed: I have added the photos, most of which are Phil’s. To place things in context, I start with my crop and edit of the MassDOT photo which shows the playing fields and I90, with marking. This is my caption. I will otherwise bracket my additions to Phil’s comments on the following photos.]
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I - The poison drainage ditch (swail) which is the most destroyed in the latest outrages.
II - The boat dock of the 20th Century, made useless by the bridge Phil mentions. Currently the target of $69,000 of Cambridge City Council development which is SECRET. Since it is secret, it is almost certainly more heartless abuse of the Charles River White Geese who had the playing fields as the major part of their habitat commencing in 1981. The fields have, increasingly and deliberately, been blocked off to them by the bizarre, and publicly hated starvation wall. This introduced 16+ foot greenery along the river makes the playing fields the equivalent of facilities ten miles from the Charles River. People cannot see the Charles River from the banks of the Charles River.
III - The other poison drainage ditch, "near the cottonwoods."
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I’ve been further researching the claim that the recessed areas were “seeded” with meadow-flowers in 2009 that is made on one of the new signs, I think the one closest to the path and the three benches. It seems somewhat of an important point as “restoring” these flowers is alleged (by the liars: you are absolutely correct in so characterizing their efforts) to be the reason that lush area has been transformed into a black-tarped eyesore.
I’ve looked in my photo archives and see the flowers coming in spontaneously in the area of the starvation wall when it was planted in 2006. The showy Shasta daisies and several sorts of wild sunflowers make their appearance then, along with the also-striking wild Bergamot, plus the more humble plants later found in all areas as they recovered from human intervention. These include both common and uncommon varieties, such as tansy, ragweed, various clovers, vetch, milkweed, goosefoot, several dock varieties, evening primrose, mallows, Scottish thistle, Joe Pye weed, bindweed, many kinds of grasses, asters, and rushes, and so on. The “invasive” purple loosestrife has made an occasional appearance but has never taken over the areas.
Years ago I made an amateur study of the wildflower populations on the empty Simplex lots, so most of these species were familiar to me. I also noted how, over the years of walking my dog on the vacant lots, the hardiest “weeds” first colonize newly bulldozed lands, then as they enrich the soil, many others take root as well until a natural biodiversity has built up.
[ed: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology destroyed the viability of Central Square, Cambridge, by purchasing industrial properties east of Central Square on the river side, and then leaving those properties to rot. MIT created a 40 acre wasteland for decades in what had been a thriving business area. That was known as the “Simplex” area after a major business which became part of this artificially created land bank / wasteland.]
The recessed areas [ed: the poison drainage ditches] were not created until 2009 and received no plantings other than trees and shrubs. Many were poorly cared for or inappropriate for conditions there and have since died. There was a stand of Phragmites at the river’s edge between the boathouse and the River Street Bridge as far back as I can recall. It is likely that windblown seeds from these reeds found their way within four years to the new recessed areas.
[The boat house is immediately to the west of the area in which the Department of Conservation and Recreation and the Cambridge City Council are about to destroy 56 mostly excellent trees and animal habitat, and which have already been conformed to allow drainage of poisons into the Charles River. Destruction, I think, includes one tree west of the boathouse. Changes between the two DCR plans removed from destruction major trees abutting the PRIVATELY OWNED boat house.]
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Here's an image from 2009 of the newly created denuded area being grassed in (after being inaccessible for two years)
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A large growth of cattails began next to the bridge/dock area, which was when created (2006) a pond, until the reeds and wildflowers transformed it into a wetland. These, which seem more moisture loving than the Phrags, began to colonize the swale in 2011 that is the subject of this year’s destruction. The upper swale near the cottonwoods is drier and has never had a reed population. [The BU Bridge and, in Boston, Boston University buildings are visible at the top. The building below them is the environmentally sensitive Massachusetts Water Resources Authority water treatment plant.]
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* * * * *
This is from 2010 showing nothing but grasses growing in the recently vandalized area, few volunteer plants around the edges. [The brick structure is the Memorial Drive overpass which runs over the Rotary which is the Cambridge End of the BU Bridge. On the near side of Memorial Drive is a ramp to the BU Bridge. A comparable ramp is the northern boundary of the ghetto which has been stripped of its food by the DCR and Friends and which has been increasingly the area to which their lives have been restricted. A stereotypical example of humans destroying habitat.]
* * * * *
* * * * *
This is when the cattails arrive and become established in 2011.
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2013 phragmites become established and thrive [Some of the trees at the top are slated to be destroyed.]
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There is a native species of Phrag, which is also botanically named “the common reed”. The more aggressive species is a European import which has been here for some two hundred years and is ubiquitous in North America, according to https://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/aquatics/commonreed.shtml The objection there is that it “crowds out native species” but again the argument that there can be such a thing as native plants on artificially created land seems untenable. Interestingly https://www.fws.gov/GOMCP/pdfs/phragmitesQA_factsheet.pdf states that Phragmites growth actually transforms marshland into meadowland, creating rich soil by the accumulation of the large amount of stalks they produce each season.
I fear that when the physical removal of the rhizomes is seen for the impossibility it is, our nature lovers might then resort to herbicides to eliminate the problem they imagine exists there. Artificially created land in the middle of an intensively populated human settlement – this is not a “natural” environment “to be protected” by humans who do not even fully understand how ecosystems operate. Take any handful of mud from the swale and you will be holding tens of millions of bacteria, over 99% of which have not yet been described by science.
In 2017 for the first time homeless people begin utilizing the reed cover for storage of their belongings and occasional campsites. Initially they had used the habitat provided by the ill-advised shrubbery barrier along the riverbank for this purpose. I do not see it as coincidental that this is when the anti-reed campaign began.
I quote from the article “Other Order: Sound Walk for an Urban Wild,” in the Spring 2017 issue of Arnoldia, the magazine of the Arnold Arboretum, regarding an often-observed reaction to the natural colonization of ravaged lands:
* * * * *
How city dwellers respond to the presence of spontaneous vegetation in their midst is influenced by personal preferences as well as by cultural norms… The aesthetics of spontaneous vegetation are usually considered negative given that much of it is perceived as ugly or messy (i.e., lacking ornamental characteristics or possessing an unkempt appearance)… many people see spontaneous vegetation as providing habitat for animals that are vectors for a number of human pathogens and infectious diseases such as rats, mosquitoes, and ticks. Similarly, the large size that spontaneous urban vegetation can reach in the absence of maintenance is viewed as providing cover for potential criminal activity and thus a threat to public safety. To the extent that urban landscapes dominated by spontaneous urban vegetation are perceived as threatening, they fit within a concept of a “wilderness” that is defined as land that exists outside the bounds of human control. [Emphasis added].
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7. Summary.
A. Four more photos.
(1) The most visible victims of so many of the pretty much nonstop outrages.
(2) More recent photos of the poison drainage ditch under attack.
July 2018:
(3) Results - pool of algae.
* * * *
May 2018, Phil Barber
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A truly vile pair of entities doing truly vile things. The difference is that the Cambridge City Council has started a “SHE MADE ME DO IT” fraud.
They realize the great evil they are doing and the very real fact that they do not want to stop.
Blaming the destruction on an Absolute Dictator with filthy hands is an improvement over the previous claim that I am responsible because I failed to keep them from doing these terrible things.
It does not change the truth of what a highly destructive City Council is doing, or the fact that they have constituents who expect meaningful environmentalism rather than outrageous destruction backed by whatever con game works.
The constant AND INCREASING secrecy says everything in a city where the City Council loudly brags of things which they can get benefit from bragging about.
8. What the Cambridge City Council should do.
The Cambridge City Council should give us honesty in government.
Stop lying that the City Council is pro environment, or change sides to the side it claims to be on.
To be specific, we request that, consistent with repeated expression of environmental concerns by THE CAMBRIDGE CITY COUNCIL, the following actions be taken:
A Retract and rescind the City Council’s action on April 24, 2017, in order 1, supporting the destruction of 56 mostly excellent trees and related outrages in the Magazine Beach recreation area.
B. Trash the Department of Conservation and Recreation as manager of all properties under its jurisdiction in Cambridge in favor of replacement by the Department of Transportation.
C. End the environmental outrages planned by the DCR and Cambridge and reverse, insofar as feasible, the many outrages accomplished by the DCR, Cambridge and related entities from November 1, 1999, to the current date.
