MIACOMET POND CONCERNS

To the editor:

I’m perplexed as to the apparent bias exhibited in Peter Brace’s ongoing coverage of neighbors’ concerns over the proposed 19-unit (38-building) Bluefin development off Miacomet Road.

On September 13 Brace wrote eloquently of the joys of kayaking Miacomet Pond, a seriously endangered body of water which is directly threatened by this massive development. I’d imagine he’d like to see the pond survive, as we members of the Miacomet Conservation Association fervently do. However, lead sentences such as September 27’s allusion to neighbors “playing the environmental card” before the Planning Board suggest that Brace distrusts our motives.

As Brace reported most recently (December 13), we did indeed request that the developers move the houses — and their 57-odd toilets and attendant septic systems — as far away from the pond as possible, by "swinging" the proposed road northward. Bluefin’s revised plan swung the road off its original north-south access (flanking the pond) only by about 10 degrees — a token adjustment that does not begin to address our concerns, which we have discussed at length in a series of meetings with Bluefin attorney Bill Hunter over the past two months.

At the Dec. 11 Planning Board meeting, “some of the abutters” were not the only ones to question Hunter as to why Bluefin refuses to move the housing lots northward, into an area long excavated as a gravel pit (and thus patently unqualified to count as a "conservation" land), and to retain instead the southerly, stillforested portion of the 30-acre lot, which could serve as an extension of the proposed park (thus doubling the length of the proposed “walking paths,” through a landscape that actually approximates a natural state). The Land Bank’s Cormac Collier also posed the question at the meeting, as did Planning Board alternate Jason Flanagan. Hunter’s response was a flat, “no,” with no explanation. This is not good-faith negotiation.

Brace made no mention of — and Bluefin no concession to — our equally pressing concern regarding the dangers of adding to the traffic of narrow, winding Miacomet Road, about which I also spoke. Widening this road, which crosses wetlands, is not an option, or at least it shouldn’t be.

In reporting that "MacDonald is still feeling cramped," Brace would seem to be assuming the powers of a psychic. In addressing the board on Dec. 11, I made no such comment. What I did say was that, in fairness, all of the abutters should share the burden of the infringement, and I questioned why the northeast portion of the property — the sandpit, abutted by tracts belonging to Planning Board chairman Donald Visco’s relatives — is being treated as sacrosanct. It’s a question that remains unanswered.

We deserve an explanation -— as does Miacomet Pond, since its very future depends on a rational examination of the impact of the proposed development. We hope to see some progress made in time for the next Planning Board Meeting, Jan. 8, which anyone who values the pond is welcome to attend.

— Sandy MacDonald

10 Pond View Drive