By Lemonia Fotiadis, Phil and Laura Fragasso, Helen and Robert Sagan
Wicked Local Wellesley
Posted Dec 20, 2010 @ 10:50 AM
Wellesley — In the Townsman Forum article of Dec.s 9, Wellesley Country Club (WCC) stated that in a previous Forum article published on Oct. 14 “the writer made several inaccurate statements regarding Wellesley Country Club’s application for a new maintenance building.” We did not.
On Dec 9, the same day that WCC touted their environmental stewardship in the Townsman, the Wetlands Protection Committee determined that WCC was in violation of wetland protection laws for dumping in protected wetland areas adjacent to Rosemary Brook without a permit. The committee announced they would issue a Cease-and-Desist letter to Wellesley Country Club.
WCC seems to steadfastly ignore the fundamental issue in their development proposal — building multiple maintenance facilities in wetland-protected areas when alternative, less-disruptive locations are available on their property.
The proposed construction is taking place in a wetland resource area as stated in our previous column. A buffer zone itself is a wetland resource area under the Wellesley Wetlands Protection Bylaw and the Riverfront Area is a wetland resource area under the Commonwealth’s Wetland Protection Act. These resource areas serve many important environmental functions, including the protection of public or private water supplies and water pollution prevention.
The club seems to believe that buffer zone impacts occur only where shovels hit earth, piles are driven, vegetation is removed and open space is paved over. The authors stand by their statement that all of the bylaw buffer zone -- and indeed areas far beyond the buffer zone -- will be impacted by the construction of these facilities. The proposed maintenance facility alone is a two-story building as long as the entire length of the façade of Wellesley’s Roche Bros. and Citizen’s Bank combined — approximately 245 feet.
State-of-the-art equipment can fail, accidents happen, and mistakes are made. As such, we believe that no unnecessary risk should be taken in this environmentally sensitive Riverfront Area that is so close to our water supply.
At the Wetlands Protection Committee meeting on Dec. 9, Wellesley Country Club representatives acknowledged that the club does use pesticides and fertilizers for their turf management. The equipment that WCC will be storing and maintaining at the proposed facility will be used for applying pesticides and fertilizers or maintaining turf that was treated with said chemicals. While we applaud the club’s efforts to design a state of the art facility, we assert that there is absolutely no reason to expose our water supply and wetland resources to such a risk given that no technological solution is fool proof.
In the Townsman article “Battle over Rosemary Brook intensifies” of Nov, 24, Paul DeYesso, a Wellesley Country Club representative, said, “It’s obviously not the only place this could go, but from an environmental impact standpoint, we feel this is the best location” The authors disagree. The best location is a location away from the Rosemary Brook Riverfront Area where four of the town’s seven drinking water wells draw from the aquifer and contribute to 84 percent of the town’s drinking water.
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