From: vfuller
To: cosmo@bostonherald.com
Sent: Wednesday, February 18, 2004 12:21 AM
Subject: Belmont and the Uplands issue

Dear Cosmo:

I am one of those who have been "running out the clock" - to use your terminology - on the Belmont Uplands project, the topic of your column on Sunday, February 15. You used the word "fruitcakes" to describe us. And you referred to the potential threat of a Chapter 40B project as though it were a club to beat back those of us who oppose the development. So I thought you might be interested in hearing the other side and realizing that, far from being fruitcakes, we are thoughtful people from all walks of life and occupations - lawyers, doctors, teachers, wildlife proponents and others - and we share a commitment to use all available means and resources to protect a piece of land known as The Uplands.

After all, your signature line says "Tell me something I don't know." So I will tell you some things that you clearly do not know. Some are practical and some are idealistic. All are important.

Our Town - "Mitt's back yard", as you called it in your headline - voted in a special Town Meeting on May 20, 2002 to zone the area for 245,000 square feet of commercial development. Later, with the subsequent economic downturn affecting commercial space, the developer presented the Town with a second option, for large-scale residential development.

We who oppose this residential development believe that there are other options. Open space is one of them. We believe that the current proposal is faulted on a variety of measures and antithetical to Belmont¹s character and long term needs.

Adjacent to the Alewife Reservation, a state-owned urban wild, the Belmont Uplands is a 15-acre parcel of land. The unique silver maple forest within that tract of land provides a home to 17 species of mammals and over 90 birds, as listed in professional inventories in the Friends of Alewife Reservation¹s Biodiversity book. Among the abundant wildlife, there are both red and grey fox, beaver and muskrat, white-tailed deer and the American Bald Eagle, a threatened species that is reported soaring above the Uplands in frequent sightings.

The area acts as a wetlands buffer for the Winn Brook area. As such, it is an invaluable contributor to the natural infrastructure of our densely populated town. The proposed development would impose greater traffic on the Winn Brook area, increase the likelihood of problems with flooding as the forest is replaced with a central garage and residential construction and impact negatively both air quality and noise with the loss of so many trees. It is easy to dismiss such "typical issues" as water in the basement when it isn't your basement that is flooded. Simple to say that the issue can be resolved with money spent on water mains and other infrastructure but costly, lengthy and projected remedies can never make up for the infrastructure that will be lost with the destruction of the forest.

Beside the more practical concerns about flooding, traffic, the paucity of space for access roads into the area and additional burden on the schools, development of this environmentally sensitive area will result in the loss of a fragile and beautiful ecosystem. You cannot violate the integrity of this forest and expect to have the ecosystem that presently exists. It is specious to say "the developers are even pledging to leave 8 acres of the site untouched." Development-free "buffer zones" between the buildings and the wetlands or areas within the spokes of the development¹s footprint are useless as habitat for wildlife, as useless as talk about reductions in outdoor lighting and other so-called ways of lessening the effects of recreation facilities on this fragile habitat.

Two and a half years, the Alewife Study Commission unanimously recommended preservation of the Uplands, stating that the area is not appropriate for either commercial OR residential development. All of the organizations that they met with agreed, pointing to the adverse hydrological, environmental and traffic impacts. The Commission¹s preferred option was acquisition of the property for the sake of our town and its citizens, now and in the future.

Future. That means the kids of tomorrow. That is the single most important reason for preserving this land. Without a doubt, we are - right now - at a crossroads and if we make the decision that wildlife and the silver maple forest are expendable there will be no way back. Even in a world where computers make the unimaginable happen in a nano-second, no method has yet been found to recreate a forest that has been clear-cut. And that would be a terrible loss for our children and for the generations that will follow them.

Virginia Fuller
29 Hurley Street
Belmont
(617) 489-0639