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News from the Friends of the Blue
Hills February 12, 2006 We went to the Blue Hills Reservoir on Chickatawbut Road in Quincy Saturday to see if continued pumping by MWRA had emptied the half-acre puddle at the east end where much of the 16-acre Reservoir's aquatic life was concentrated after four months of draining. We found the pump silent and the intake hose disconnected, altho' the intake was still in the puddle, which had iced over. Based on the volume of mutilated fish and sediment on the spillway below the outfall, it looked as though incoming fish and mud had clogged the intake or the pump. Perhaps the screen on the intake had come off or was blocked by the volume of fish. We could see about a dozen larger bass hovering in about five inches of water under the new ice in the puddle, but there was none of the lively movement evident on Thursday. Photos of the carnage are posted at the link below. Beware, some are gruesome: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ophis/sets/72057594063004791/ The drifts of dead fish will be a bonanza for the Reservation's wildlife scavengers, but perhaps today's blizzard will delay the cleanup. We expect many more were washed down Furnace Brook toward Black's Creek and Quincy Bay. MWRA is draining the Reservoir, which has not been used since 1981, in order to construct two buried concrete water tanks 40 feet high and 240 feet in diameter at a cost of $35 million. Because DEP Commissioner Robert Golledge awarded MWRA an unprecedented exemption to the MA Wetlands Protection Act, none of the 8.7 acres of aquatic habitat to be lost will be replaced. Friends of the Blue Hills is challenging the exemption in court, and is lobbying for legislation that will overturn it, in hopes of preventing the historic Blue Hills Reservation from becoming the scene of the largest net loss of protected wetlands approved anywhere in the commonwealth since 1990 or earlier. More info at: http://www.friendsofthebluehills.org/BHreservoir.htm ___________________________________________________________________________ You have received this message because you are on the Friends of the Blue Hills email list of members and other interested parties. If you have any comments, corrections to this list, or would like to be removed from it, please click here. |