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Governor Deval Patrick May 21 , 2007 Re: MWRA storage tanks in Blue Hills Reservoir, Quincy Dear Governor Patrick: Attached is a 17-page letter requesting that you take action to prevent the Blue Hills Reservation in Quincy from becoming the scene of the largest net loss of wetlands approved anywhere in Massachusetts for at least twenty years. Friends of the Blue Hills is a nonprofit charitable trust based in Milton. Since 1976 we have worked to protect and preserve the century-old Blue Hills Reservation. We have over 850 dues-paying members. Our request concerns a plan by the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA) to fill over half of the sixteen-acre Blue Hills Reservoir on Chickatawbut Road in order to construct two cylindrical concrete water tanks, each 40 feet high and 240 feet in diameter, at a cost to ratepayers of $40 million. Thanks to an unprecedented exemption from the Wetlands Protection Act awarded by the Romney administration, MWRA will replace none of the 8.7 acres of clean open water it plans to eliminate, contrary to the commonwealth's long-standing "no net loss of wetlands" policy. This policy, formalized by the last Dukakis administration in 1990, was upheld without exception by four Republican governors until MWRA came to the Blue Hills. We ask that you suspend the project unless and until MWRA agrees to conform to the policy. Our request, first made seven years ago, has been seconded by Mayor Phelan of Quincy, the Quincy and Milton Conservation Commissions, and sixteen statewide environmental organizations including Mass Audubon and the Sierra Club. Other subscribers include Senator Brian Joyce, who introduced you on election night, and former Representative Robert Coughlin of Dedham, who retired to join your administration. Indeed, should you choose not to intervene, you will become the only elected official on record in support of the project. We recognize that MWRA has a vital role to play in providing drinking water to metropolitan Boston, but that role should not vacate the equally vital public interest in protecting historic wetlands and parklands. We also note that MWRA, which has no money except our money, has failed to demonstrate that this lavish project answers a genuine need. The tanks have been called "costly and redundant" by Norwood Town Manager John Carroll, the longest-serving member of MWRA's Board of Directors. We have already applied, without success, to your new Environmental Secretary Ian Bowles, now chairman of MWRA. We ask that you act quickly because in November MWRA awarded a construction contract for the tanks over the objections of Quincy, even though MWRA has said Quincy is the project's primary beneficiary. As it stands today, the project cannot and will not achieve three of the goals that MWRA once deemed critical to its success: community support, minimal environmental disruption, and reasonable cost to consumers. You are our last resort. Please help us protect the Blue Hills Reservation for ourselves and future generations. |
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Sincerely, |
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