Blue Hills Reservoir: one more thing

Friends of the Blue Hills was able to challenge DEP's abandonment of its long-standing no net loss of wetlands policy at the Reservoir because forty-four of our members joined in an appeal.

Now the Patrick administration is seeking to revise the Wetlands Act regulations so as to end the ability of citizens to bring such appeals. This denial of public participation will concentrate power further in the executive, and ensure that if state government prefers not to protect wetlands, those who are most affected will be able to do nothing about it.

The matter is treated at length in the op-ed below published in yesterday's Quincy PATRIOT-LEDGER. What we ask is that you visit the governor's website and click the "Support this issue" button at the following link:

http://devalpatrick.com/issue.php?issue_id=7640699

You will have to register for the site and provide your name and address. It's worth it, in our opinion. Please let the governor know that denying ordinary people a voice in conservation decisions is a bad idea.

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COMMENTARY: Wetland appeals could dry up

By SUE BASS
Sue Bass is president of the Mystic River Watershed Association and a director of the Belmont Citizens Forum


When Deval Patrick was elected governor, he decided to stay in touch with the grassroots by creating an issues Web site (devalpatrick.com) to collect citizens’ comments on topics of the day.

Many issues listed there are what you might expect: gay marriage (pro and con), renewable energy, gun control, taxes, etc.

But near the top is something called ‘‘Citizens Wetlands Appeals.’’ It’s a highly technical issue - proposed regulations eliminating the right of groups of citizens to appeal a decision of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection to an independent administrative magistrate.

Why has it shot up so fast - into the top 10 of 675 issues in eight days, and still climbing? Because many people see the regulation change as an attempt to gut the state’s landmark Wetlands Protection Act.

Protests about the DEP’s proposed regulations are coming from all over the state, from the Cape to the Berkshires, from Acton and Arlington to Westborough and Winchester and Wrentham.

Here’s what S.S. of Wilmington said on the Patrick Committee’s Web site: ‘‘Our wetlands are the people’s water resources, not just the developers’ or the government’s... It is wrong to allow a handful within the development community to be the only ones with access to government. It is taxation without representation, just a power play by the DEP and developers who think they are superior to the average citizen.’’

Environmentalists generally do see this proposed regulation as a ploy by developers to keep the Wetlands Protection Act from hampering their construction.

As Kyla Bennett of New England Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility said recently, ‘‘They’re running out of cheap dry land to build on, so they want to drain the wetlands.’’

The proposed regulations are an example of what is usually called ‘‘expedited permitting’’ or ‘‘permit streamlining.’’ This was a hallmark of the Romney administration, but Patrick has picked it up with enthusiasm. The latest catch phrase is ‘‘permitting at the speed of business.’’

There’s nothing wrong with that goal. Nobody believes in red tape, but both administrations have pursued their goal backwards. Instead of improving the bureaucracy so that it acts promptly, they are trying to keep citizen-advocates from challenging DEP’s mistakes.

Under the current regulations, if DEP has approved a wetlands decision that citizens believe is wrong, a group of 10 or more people may get together to appeal it. Instead of going to court, they request something intended to be quicker and cheaper for everyone: an adjudicatory hearing before an administrative magistrate.

In 2005, the Romney administration amended the regulations for adjudicatory hearings to make it much harder for citizen-advocates to bring administrative appeals. Probably as a result, only four citizen appeals were filed last year, down from 15 in 2005 and 21 in 2004. The new DEP regulations proposed by the Patrick administration go further.

They would eliminate the administrative appeal rights of virtually all citizens, even most abutters.

Local citizens do sometimes have NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) reasons for opposing filling a marsh or building a new road that might damage a stream. But developers always have self-interested reasons for filling the marsh or building the road, and no one’s proposing to curtail their right to appeal DEP decisions that go against them.

Actually, the concern of local citizens is often unselfish. As neighbors to that marsh or stream, they see the wildlife nourished by wetlands and know the marsh cleans storm water and reduces flooding in their neighborhood.

Wetlands are comparable in their biological productivity to tropical rain forests. While we criticize poor tropical nations for failure to protect their rain forests, we need to look at what we’re doing to our natural resources. We need to protect our wetlands, and we need the help of citizen-advocates to do so.

As M.A. of Sudbury puts it in a comment on the Deval Patrick Issues Web site, ‘‘Gov. Patrick has emphasized that civic participation is necessary for healthy government. Citizen involvement in environmental issues should be applauded by him, not hampered.’’

Copyright 2007 The Patriot Ledger

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

Patrick: I won't protect Blue Hills wetlands (but you'll pay $40 million to fill them)

News from the Friends of the Blue Hills

Governor Deval Patrick has declined pleas by over 500 Friends of the Blue Hills members and others who asked him to require the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority to replace 8.7 acres of protected wetlands it is filling to construct concrete water tanks in the Blue Hills Reservoir on Chickatawbut Road in Quincy, which has been part of the Blue Hills Reservation since 1896.

The $40 million MWRA project violates the state's long-standing no-net-loss of wetlands policy, which requires any agency seeking to fill wetlands wholesale to replace them. It will generate the largest net loss of wetlands produced by any project in Massachusetts for over twenty years.

By refusing to intervene, Patrick becomes the first elected official to go on record in support of the project. MWRA previously rejected formal requests that the wetlands be replaced from Mayor Phelan of Quincy, Senator Brian Joyce, and Representatives Ayers, Coughlin, Creedon, Galvin, Mariano, and Timilty, as well as the Quincy and Milton Conservation Commissions and sixteen state and local environmental organizations including Mass Audubon and the Sierra Club.

The project, called 'costly and redundant' by MWRA's longest-serving board member John Carroll, has been controversial from the start, not only because of its unprecedented wetland impacts, but its siting in one of the most scenic and visible parts of the century-old Reservation. In 1997 it was opposed by late MDC Reservations and Historic Sites Director Brian Broderick, who said it would cause "significant impact and long-term disruption" and demanded that it be moved to a less damaging location. Last November Quincy's representative on the MWRA Board of Directors voted against the bid award but was overridden. MWRA Executive Director Fred Laskey has said "92 percent of the project benefits Quincy."

MWRA's insistence on obtaining an unparalleled exemption from the long-standing no net loss policy caused the project to become much more expensive than it might have been otherwise, as Laskey admitted at a statehouse hearing in 2006, when he said that the tanks had been originally budgeted at $20 million, and that the agency had already spent more on delays and litigation than it would have cost to replace the wetlands.

The now-drained reservoir was built by damming 16-acre Twinbrook Swamp in 1951 and has not been used since 1981. It was the largest body of fresh open water in Quincy. In 2001 Camp, Dresser, and McKee found that it held some of the cleanest water in eastern Massachusetts, comparable only to White Pond in Concord and Long Pond in Plymouth, and clear enough to support vegetation across its entire bottom despite a maximum depth of 35 feet. It was popular with hikers, and Reservation trail maps recommended its perch, bass, and pickerel to anglers beginning in the 1980's.

It will be replaced by two cylindrical ten-million gallon concrete tanks, each 43 feet high and 250 feet in diameter. The giant mound of dirt covering them will block views of the adjacent ridgeline. The project is the largest construction in the Reservation since interstates 95 and 93 were completed forty years ago. The Blue Hills Reservation, a historical masterpiece of park-making, was originally acquired with public money over a century ago in order to preserve natural scenery for public use and enjoyment.

A 1999 MWRA report said that the tank project could not succeed unless it achieved community support, incurred reasonable costs, and caused minimal environmental disruption. It failed miserably on all three counts, and is going forward only because MWRA does not consider itself accountable to those who pay its bills. We regret that Governor Patrick did not see fit to lend a hand to ourselves, our many supporters, or our elected representatives, and help us prevent the Blue Hills Reservation from becoming the place where our state's proud tradition of wetlands protection was tossed aside in favor of government arrogance and stupidity.

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DCR trail map now on-line

DCR's celebrated Blue Hills Reservation trail map, last updated by ranger Kevin Hollenbeck in 2004, is now on our website.

It is no substitute for the printed edition, available both at Trailside Museum and at Reservation headquarters on Hillside St., but it uses less paper and requires no folding.

A new edition is expected before long. In the meantime, enjoy!

http://www.friendsofthebluehills.org/MPC/dcr2004/2004dcr.htm