Private developer cuts down trees in public park
The remains of two Linear Park trees in North Cambridge. A green asbestos decontamination tent is seen in the background. (Photo: Charles Teague)
The desecration of our public parks continues. Last Thursday, I saw that two magnolia trees 10 feet inside Linear Park had been snapped off at their base for the redevelopment of the W.R. Grace site in North Cambridge. This mistake was the result of the developer moving its construction fence 12 feet into the park. The developer also moved its asbestos decontamination tent to the park boundary, set its exhaust fans on park land and aimed those fans to blow into our park. City personnel either knew or should have known that park trees were on the developer side of the fence without any protection.
Now you may say “it’s only two trees.” But it’s two more trees in addition to three more trees cut down illegally Dec. 2 on Madison Avenue, the 155 more trees approved to be cut down for the Jefferson Park redevelopment, about 100 more trees to be cut down at MIT’s Volpe development and the eight more trees to be cut down at Carl Barron Plaza. Sadly, this is only a partial list.
Our Urban Forest Master Plan calls specifically for increasing the number of trees in parks as well as increasing the number of parks. The UFMP task force understood that parks are supposed to be a safe space where trees can thrive, as opposed to the harsh environment street trees endure.
Additionally, these were mature trees that had not only survived the historic droughts of 2016 and 2022 but have gone decades without fertilizer and irrigation but with an abundance of winter rock salt.
An asbestos decontamination tent with blower is seen at right as women and a baby stroll down the Linear Park. (Photo: Charles Teague)
Mismanagement of our parks is nothing new. My Sept. 21 letter cited city management’s “baroque and broken” organizational structure, which likely led to the downfall of more than 100 trees due to the city’s failure to repair the Danehy Park irrigation system in a timely way. It ended with:
Our new city manager should reorganize existing staff into an independent Parks & Trees Department with a mission statement implementing the existing tree master plan and, for parks, balancing priorities of green open space with healthy trees and recreation facilities to maximize public health.
This has not happened. Instead, inappropriately trained staff have been assigned to redesign our Linear Park, despite the existing design being award-winning. That they’re inappropriately trained is proven by the flawed land survey, which was critical for determining that the trees destroyed by the developer were our park trees. The survey specification itself was defective, as it excluded all recently planted trees – maybe $100,000 worth. Additionally, 43 mature trees, nine ranging in diameter from 13 inches to 20 inches, were omitted, for a total of 160 park trees missing from the survey.
City-owned Linear Park trees are inside a developer’s fence, and lacking the wood boards typically put up to protect trunks. (Photo: Charles Teague)
Our city staff didn’t notice these many defects. I reviewed the survey and submitted detailed corrections. After a month, there is no word for even an estimated delivery date for a corrected survey, let alone a corrected survey itself. We deserve better for our tax dollars.
Once again, I call for city management to reorganize the management of our public parks. More immediately, all park trees near the W.R. Grace redevelopment must have their trunks and roots protected from construction activity, and the developer’s fence must be removed from our park.
To be clear, the tree loss in Linear Park and this summer’s massive tree loss in Danehy Park are a result of historic top-level mismanagement. What is unacceptable is not fixing the system.
If you want to further help preserve our parks and tree canopy, email [email protected]
Charles Teague has been advocating for preserving the tree canopy and Linear Park since 2016.
is there any consequence for this kind of thing? Destruction of city property? vandalism? Or just total impunity?
For these tragedies to happen on a continual basis, the whole City of Cambridge, from the City Manager, the City Council, down to the last employee, have been asleep at the wheel. We deserve better, and so do the trees.
How about any consequences for the lack of professional oversight from City officials?
After the quick build junior k bike lane mess created in n cam on mass ave. Not only did they not take a step back they took it next level on garden st and removed an entire auto lane lol. Can’t make this up.
No area is exempt from the ineptitude. Join the club!
Where is Inspectional Services?! Why was a developer allowed to move its construction fence 12 feet into the park AND point its asbestos fans towards a public park so everyone who enters the park has a chance of breathing asbestos that has been buried for decades to protect the public. Why do residents have to do city employees’ jobs? Whenever there is development in our neighborhoods, we are the ones who report the problems and try to get ISD to resolve them. We don’t get paid to do this and they do.
If not for the extraordinary efforts and steady devotion and extreme watchfulness of a few residents in Cambridge, I cannot imagine what Cambridge’s tree population would be today. I know it would be sufficiently less than today, and we’d all be poorer for that. Despite numerous efforts by many Cambridge residents to educate and exhort the city to do much better job in protecting its mature trees and bringing to life younger ones, we witness too many failures, as Charles makes so evident in his opinion piece. With a new city manager, perhaps this urgent message of the need for the city to invest in tree protection will get through. Thanks Charles for all you do to keep tree health and safety on the action agenda for city officials.
@prc How about any consequences for the lack of professional oversight from City officials?
@Master Where is Inspectional Services?
@JudyJohnson For these tragedies to happen on a continual basis, the whole City of Cambridge, from the City Manager, the City Council, down to the last employee, have been asleep at the wheel.
Nothing is going to happen. That’s the way this city works. There is ineptitude at all levels of the city government. There is little oversight of employees, so what happened to the trees is a small part of what continually happens. It is not the employees fault. It is the administrators who are in charge. And there are no consequences for those in the administrative part of the city bureaucracy who screw up.
There are so many great employees in this city. However, the administrative people in City Hall are terrible with little to no accountability. And it is a shame because the salaries in the administrative ranks are high, and post retirement pensions and post retirement health coverage are off the charts.
Let’s face it. Very few people, including the City Council, care enough to see that things work well in Cambridge.
Meant to say thank you to Charles as well. You can feel how much you actually care about the community. It is very disheartening to read the entire article but “ The developer also moved its asbestos decontamination tent to the park boundary, set its exhaust fans on park land and aimed those fans to blow into our park”.
Is this true – really ? the city forced masks closed schools playgrounds removed basketball nets. Meanwhile they are allowing asbestos to be pumped into the area! Priorities….
Absolutely pathetic oversight and management. I wonder if this was employees zooming in from home who were supposed to be in charge of this?
Meanwhile, literally millions of dollars of trees are dead at Danehy, dozens of homeless dead in central square, but at least the 55 million$ bike lanes are being used by nobody this morning.
And yet we still condone this outcome with more rezoning by removing front- side and back- setbacks around new buildings with bigger footprints and don’t consider those mature trees on private property. I thought there was a tree ordinance. Yet those councilors who were elected because of their stance on tree protection are morphing into supporting bigger buildings which eliminate those trees and create environmental inequity in new housing projects. bottom line- council doesn’t look beyond the sound bite to full consequences let alone balance for the community.
I entirely agree with Charles’s extreme dismay about unnecessary and/or illegal tree removals. For those concerned about asbestos, however, it’s worthwhile to know that HEPA filters are used for abatement exhaust air flows, so no asbestos is spewed into the areas outside enclosures.
https://www.pennmedicine.org/cancer/types-of-cancer/mesothelioma/asbestos-cancer/asbestos-abatement
From my experience at the Squirrelwood site, where 18 trees were removed by the developer, the BZA should be making site visits when permits are approved…or at least requiring photos of every detail of changes being made. It is very hard to hold folks accountable post facto.In our case the City did the right thing but it took about 9 months to be resolved.Developers don’t want to wait that long.