My Nonprofit Reviews

I live very near Walden Pond, which is actually in Concord, MA, and never swim there, because the beach smells, due, it is believed, to overuse as a state beach.

I just received a mailing from the Walden Woods project. On the front of the postcard is a photo, carefully angled to show the "closeness" of a proposed school bus parking site to the Pond (the site is on a capped landfill) while hiding the fact that there is a major commuter road between this site and the pond. There won't be any runoff from the buses to the pond.

The other side of the card has one outright lie, where they state that a town committee concluded that the school buses should remain at the High School, despite the fact that the committee actually said that parking the buses at the school was not an option.

There is also a lie by omission, which ignores the reality that no one has found another useable site to park the buses in town, despite a large number of searches. If we don't build a lot, the buses will have to be kept in another town, at great expensive and much larger *local* gas emissions and pollution, which would certainly adversely affect the pond.

A number of years ago, this group derailed an affordable housing project, claiming it would interfere with Walden Woods. They promised to buy and give to the town a better, larger site. Now, many years later, they have facilitated a donation from the state to the town of surplus land, land that has a potentially toxic site and might wetlands on it, tests aren't yet complete, and it is unclear if it will even be buildable.

Several years ago, they attempted to stop the building of playing fields, claiming that the area was part of Thoreau's Walden Woods, although the area had been clearcut for firewood in Thoreau's time.

The most useful thing that the Walden Woods Project could do, would be to lobby the state to close the Pond as a state beach, or at least, restrict access to it, including pedestrian access, since many park illegally and walk in, to avoid the full parking lot, which is currently the only restriction of access to the beach.

The town of Concord is building a parking lot on the old dump, which 1) will be screened from the State Reservation, 2) will have no runoff to affect the woods or pond, and 3) will save energy and be less environmentally invasive than any other option, which is the smartest and least harmful option to the woods and the pond in the long run. Since there is no other place in town to build the parking lot, not building it at the dump would be harmful to the town's environment, which includes Walden Pond.

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