Cambridge Conservation Hearing on Magazine Beach

Cambridge Conservation Hearing on Magazine Beach
Monday October 19, 2009


Cambridge Conservation Commission’s hearing Monday, October 19, 2009 at 8:00 p.m., on the joint Cambridge-Department of Conservation and Recreation project. The hearing is at 344 Broadway, corner of Inman Street, in the fourth floor conference room.

Hundreds of us signed the 2008 petition to support the conservation of Magazine Beach and Captains Island as natural and historic green space—as untreated, multipurpose fields open to all. We supported Cambridge purchase of land for new sports fields away from the banks of the river, in underserved Cambridge neighborhoods; funding and proper maintenance for existing children and adult pools; restored access to the river for human activity and waterfowl of all kinds; and a natural history walk and passive information center on the history and ecology of the Charles River estuary.

Now the DCR is asking the ConCom for an extension of the ConCom's Order of Conditions to allow the work to continue.

The ConCom has repeatedly accepted the DCR’s lies about habitat at Magazine Beach and the DCR’s claims it can prevent the chemicals necessary to maintain the fields there from polluting the river. If the effects of climate change—including storms that overwhelm levees and swales—on human and wildlife habitat weren’t clear in 1999, or 2003, or 2006, they are now. It is time to put a stop to this project.

Please let the ConCom know you oppose allowing the project to continue. Please attend the hearing or, if that’s not possible, contact ConCom Director Jennifer Wright, at jwright (at) cambridgema.gov.

Finally, at the most recent City Council candidates’ forum focusing on the environment, a candidate familiar with our petition seems to have claimed there was no public opposition to the destruction at Magazine Beach, that it is “gone.” I would suggest that in this election year it’s also time to hold our elected officials, who could have stopped the project but did not, accountable; and to ask what the challengers will do.

Marilyn Wellons