POR 2016 #270 · Agenda item attachment · Oct 17 2016

City of Cambridge O-9 IN CITY COUNCIL October 17, 2016 COUNCILLOR KELLEY COUNCILLOR DEVEREUX WHEREAS: The City of Cambridge contains a 115 rare adaptation center and urban wild state park along the Upper Alewife Basin in northwest Cambridge owned by the Department of Conservation and Recreation, called Alewife Reservation, with ponds, streams and a river and surrounding wetlands, meadows, scrub-shrub and three groves along linear protected floodplain strips of biodiversity for one linear mile; and WHEREAS: These rare natural Mystic River Watershed resources, to include both public and privately owned land, are a great benefit to the city and region, to include wildlife habitat as wells as both marsh and water resources that are beneficial in this time of unusual drought, and well stewarded and educated with the human and labor resources of Friends of Alewife Reservation; and WHEREAS: The Alewife area in Cambridge was studied by a large state-wide Science Committee appointed by the City which presented a Vulnerability Assessment Climate Study at MIT in 2014 for the public which showed Alewife as a very vulnerable flood zone; and WHEREAS: Governor Baker has recently issued a climate bill to the Legislature which includes developing adaptation strategies to conserve natural resources which are employed to sustain resources which build resilience to impacts of climate change; and WHEREAS: The remaining acreage in and around the Alewife Reservation provides habitat for 20 mammal species, over 90 bird species, and flora to include possible endangered species with, FAR discovered, Gentiana Andrewsii registered with the state as one, and there are surrounding development threats to this plant, habitat and functioning of these wetlands; now therefore be it RESOLVED: That the City Council go on record in opposition to any pathway or other intrusion which might be developed through the woods, marshes, or Bordering Land Subject to Flooding (BLSF) or other natural resource habitat to create a pedestrian trail to the Alewife T stop from areas west and north of Little River; and be it further RESOLVED: That the City Council go on record in opposition to any other development which could in any way impact the 100-year flood plain which is predicted to experience such flooding every 30 years, and wetlands, BLSF, or bordering vegetated wetlands (BVW), associated with the Alewife Reservation; and be it further

ORDERED: That the City Clerk be and hereby is requested to forward a suitably engrossed copy of this resolution to the Cambridge Conservation Commission for consideration in any development permitting proceedings under the Wetlands Protection Act regarding the Alewife Reservation or nearby lands that might come before that Commission. CHARTER RIGHT EXERCISED BY COUNCILLOR KELLEY