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Four more arrested at forest protest

Arrests at forest in Belmont

Protesters prepare to be cuffed before ride to booking. Photo via Danny Factor.

Four more people were arrested this morning as part of ongoing protests against tree cutting on woodlands where Belmont, Arlington and Cambridge come together.

News of the arrests comes from the Green-Rainbow Party:

Secretary of State candidate Danny Factor was arrested today along with three other protesters as they demonstrated against the destruction of the Silver Maple Forest on the Cambridge/Belmont border. The sound of trees crashing to the ground could be heard in the background as Belmont police handcuffed the demonstrators who had entered the area to ask that the forest be left intact to allow efforts to protect the land to come to fruition.

Nine people were arrested in protests last week.

In addition to concern over the trees, protesters say the condo project planned for the land would cause flooding in the nearby Alewife Brook by removing the water-absorbing qualities of a forest.


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Comments

Did these people really think they would stop this with anything short of a court order? Either get a restraining order from a judge to halt the work, or actually chain yourself to those trees. Otherwise, you are unlikely to stop anything...as demonstrated.

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but the developer is in a hurry to cut down all the trees before the court can issue a decision.

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There is a mechanism to get an ex-parte emergency temporary restraining order that is built for situations like this. If they went that route and got denied emergency status, then their case is likely not very compelling at all.

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Good point. Proper tree huggers would chain themselves to trees. Must be poser tree huggers.

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More than ten years, actually. This is their last-gasp attempt to protect this grove of trees. They have done all the usual stalling tactics, but they have exhausted their options.

I've stayed out of this despite knowing some of those involved. I used to work over there, and, while I understand the value of forest lands to the watershed, I also understand the importance of having places for people to live that are densely built and near transit. I guess I never found the case for this particular stand of trees to be compelling. It isn't exactly primeval, but some of the same people being arrested here act like the Middlesex Fells is their personal pristine wilderness soiled by other taxpayers wanting to use it for mountain biking, too.

I think members of this group did a lot more for the health of the watershed when they got the current owners of the office park to abandon and restore areas that were illegally converted to parking lots and built on, and restore some other wetland areas in behind the complex.

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It isn't exactly primeval, but some of the same people being arrested here act like the Middlesex Fells is their personal pristine wilderness soiled by other taxpayers wanting to use it for mountain biking, too.

Ah, those guys. Not much sympathy here.

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I love trees. I think open space is great, when it is done in the right context. However, this is a transit oriented residential project with affordable housing in an area with a growing jobs base and in an area with very high barriers to entry for you and me. I can't afford to live in Arlington, Belmont, or Cambridge owing to the amount of restrictions which allows for only wealthy or broke people to live there. This helps at least some people afford to live there, rather than take their car out to Hopkinton or Stoneham.

There is lots of open space and water holding capacity at the Fresh Pond nearby as well at Little Pond, Spy Pond, and the totally man made Clay Pit Pond. There is the additional open space/forest / non-paved areas of Mount Auburn and the hospital sites abutting Fresh Pond. The area is not lacking for drainage.

If you want trees, pay for them. A 298 unit residential project with permits in the ABC/Watertown market is worth, pre-construction about $60,000 per unit to be built. I'm sure these nice people have $17,880,000 just burning a hole in their pockets. Pay up or move on.

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Would you walk a mile through a deserted office park to get to Alewife T station every day?

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I used to walk it regularly when I worked at Arthur D. Little - the paths through the Alewife Reservation make it much shorter than walking around through the roadways.

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at the far end of Acorn Park Drive, where it meets the eastbound Route 2 on-ramp from Lake Street. You'd have to walk through all of the Cambridge Discovery Park (former Arthur D Little) property to get to Alewife.

The new apartments and condos along CambridgePark Drive can reasonably be called transit-oriented, but this can't.

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That's if you wanted to walk on pavement.

There are back trails - and, of course, bicycles. Definitely a very short bike hop to Alewife.

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... why does it have 500 parking spaces?

Would you want to walk (or bike) through the empty industrial park at 7 pm during the winter months?

A much better place for a truly transit-oriented development would be the empty, fenced-off land at the end of Harvey Street in North Cambridge.

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Stretch the legs a bit. This is transit oriented. It's a half to three-quarters of a mile to Alewife. Where I grew up that was close enough to the T to be called transit oriented. It is less than the distance than I walk from Rowes Wharf to my office. Walking = Good.

Even Swirl agrees with me and the Charles hasn't turned into a pool of fire.

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Ron is correct about having to walk the length of the industrial park...this development would be at the very far end of the industrial park.

The protestors, even if they're environmental 'crazies', do have a point about flooding. Those trees do drink up the rainwater.

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Not sure if this complex will do the same.

Also it's most definitely walkable, My neighbor routinely walks 2 miles to Alewife from our part of Arlington and claims it takes him 30 minutes. I just bike there in 10, but definitely doable for him at least.

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A few people, myself included, would walk or bike that distance in their daily commute. But we're outliers.

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No peace!

#raised fist

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