Help Needed at Blue Hills Reservoir

Friends:

On January 18, 2005 DEP will hold a public hearing at One Winter St., Boston on its Draft Intended Use Plan for the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund loan program.  A notice of the hearing, along with the 2005 priority project list, is available at the DEP website (Word or PDF).

The Draft Plan authorizes the Fund to grant MWRA $4 million in 2005 toward construction of the $30 million Blue Hills Covered Storage Project in the Blue Hills Reservation in Quincy.

The project, which received a variance from the MA Wetlands Protection Act in November, 2003, will result in a net loss of approximately 8.7 acres of protected wetlands when the Blue Hills Reservoir on Chickatawbut Road is drained for 2-3 years and over half is filled in order to construct two circular concrete water storage tanks, each 40 ft high and 240 ft in diameter.

Last Thursday DEP analyst Lisa Rhodes testified in a hearing at the Division of Administrative Law Appeals that she knew of no other Wetlands Act variance approving a net loss of this magnitude.  Rhodes wrote the MWRA's permit.  She has been responsible for reviewing variance applications since 2000, and often prepared such applications during her employment at MA Highway from 1989-2000.   Her testimony is borne out by FBH's notes on the seventeen variances issued by the Dept. between 1999 and 2004.

A public perception exists that "no net loss of wetlands" is the commonwealth's official policy, as evidenced by a GLOBE editorial published in December, and a GLOBE story on wetlands published last May.  DEP's Wetland Replication Guidelines, released in April, 2002, state that  "protection of the wetland resources in the Commonwealth cannot be successful unless permitted wetland losses are adequately mitigated by successful replication projects."

The variance issued to MWRA for the tanks requires creation of 10,000 sq ft of new wetlands, which will reduce the proposed loss by less than three percent.

The sixteen-acre Blue Hills reservoir was created by the damming of Twinbrook Swamp in 1951.  It was built entirely in a forested wetland protected by the Reservation since 1896.  After thirty years of operation it shut down in 1981.  Since then it has collected runoff and groundwater from the adjacent hillside.  None of its contents have ever been delivered to MWRA.  

The reservoir offers the longest water view from any road in the 7000-acre Blue Hills Reservation.  According to the MA Water Watch Partnership, it is one of the the clearest lakes or ponds in the state, with visibility exceeding 25 ft, comparable only to White Pond in Concord and Long Pond in Plymouth.  It is popular with fishermen and supports five species of game fish.  

A survey by Friends of the Blue Hills demonstrated that the reservoir's 1900 feet of undisturbed shoreline provide habitat for at least 45 species of native plants, including Large St. Johnswort (scarce regionally, and unknown elsewhere in the park) and Slender Pinweed (Endangered or Extirpated in Maine and Maryland, Endangered in New Hampshire and New Jersey, and Threatened in New York).

In April, 2000, commenting on MWRA's Environmental Notification Form, Friends of the Blue Hills stated that it could support the tanks provided that MWRA agreed to to create or protect wetlands "substantially equivalent" to those it would eliminate.  But MWRA has never budged from its position that it need not and will not provide such mitigation.

At the DEP hearing on Jan 18th Friends intends to submit comments asking the Department to remove the project from its revolving fund eligibility list, and not reinstate it until MWRA agrees to meet standards regarding wetlands protection that have been met by every other large public project since 1999, including the Greenbush line, the Rt. 3 widening to New Hampshire, and the MWRA's massive 115-million gallon water tank beside the Mass Pike in Weston.

The commonwealth's Sustainable Development Principles require state agencies to protect and enhance the environment, and specifically to "protect and restore environmentally sensitive lands, natural resources, wildlife habitats, and cultural and historic landscapes" and "promote developments that respect and enhance the state's natural resources."  The proposed tanks are not consistent with these principles.

If you or your organization agrees with us that large-scale wetland filling, particularly in a century-old public reservation, involves real costs to the environment, and that the Massachusetts Wetlands Protection Act requires applicants to take responsibility for such costs, please consider submitting your own comments at the upcoming hearing.

Written comments may be submitted until Jan. 20.  Here is a sample.  They should be addressed to:

Steven McCurdy, Director
Division of Municipal Services
MA Dept. of Environmental Protection
One Winter St.
Boston, MA  02108

Pls provide us a copy at:

info@friendsofthebluehills.org

or

Friends of the Blue Hills
PO Box 416
Milton, MA  02186

More information
Questions?  Call 617-698-7759

Thank you for supporting wetlands protection in Massachusetts.

Thomas Palmer
Friends of the Blue Hills
___________________________________________________________________________
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.