Blue Hills Reservoir: for the record

Dear editor, Boston Globe:

Re: "State nixes replication of reservoir," July 19, 2007

Of course we read your story with great interest and we thank you for your considerable effort to present our perspective accurately.

A big part of our work has, perhaps wrongly, focused on misinformation provided by MWRA and your story contained less of it than most accounts to date.  Nonetheless, a bit crept in here and there.  For instance:

paragraph 4:
The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, owner of the reservoir

MWRA loves to pretend that the site is its property.  But in fact it has belonged to the commonwealth since 1896, and MWRA has no ability to sell or transfer it.  Quincy assessor's maps and DCR trail maps show no distinction between the reservoir and the rest of the historic Blue Hills Reservation. The only sense in which MWRA qualifies as owner is defined in Chap. 372 of Acts of 1984, the legislation creating MWRA and usually called "the Enabling Act."  Here are some relevant excerpts (bolding added):

Section 2.  As used in this act, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise, the following words and phrases shall have the following meanings:

(r)    "System real property," all real property held by or on behalf of the commonwealth immediately prior to the effective date of this act in and for the MDC sewer system and the MDC water system, including all land, easements, and other interests in real property, including, without limitation, real property interests in buildings, structures and improvements and in sources of water supply.

Section 4(c)    The ownership of the system real property, as it relates to the sewer and waterworks systems shall not be transferred to the Authority under this act, but the Authority, as of July first, nineteen hundred and eighty-five, shall have the rights to enter use, improve, operate, maintain and manage that portion of the system real property in accordance with this act

MWRA did not inherit any Blue Hills Reservation land from MDC in 1984, but only a right to "enter, use, operate, maintain, and manage" the reservoir--which it declined to do, since it was shut down in 1981.  Nor does "enter, use, operate, maintain, and manage" include a right to empty the reservoir and replace it with dirt and concrete.

In what sense, then, does MWRA own the reservoir?

paragraph 5:
The $37 million project

MWRA's FY 2008 Capital Improvement Program, approved by MWRA Board of Directors on December 13, 2006, lists the total cost of the tank project at $40,427,000.  We would be interested to know how it shrank by $3 million.

Errors aside, the story nowhere mentions what is arguably the most newsworthy aspect of the project: that it involves the largest net loss of wetlands (8.7 acres) generated by any construction approved statewide for over twenty years.  That's because DEP set aside its long-standing no net loss of wetlands policy for MWRA, the policy that in 2004 the GLOBE called "a cornerstone" of wetlands protection in Massachusetts. Even those of your readers who don't use and love the Reservation should be aware of this sharp break with past practice.  Formerly, any public agency that filled wetlands wholesale was required to replace them.  We wonder how many more such exemptions MWRA plans to acquire, and how much they'll cost us.

Tom Palmer
President, Friends of the Blue Hills