. Alewife Reservation & Alewife Brook master plan. Wetlands; Wetland conservation. have all left their mark on the landscape. Con- taminated or waste disposal sites are another consequence of industrial development in this area; over 50 such sites exist on the periphery of the study area. During the last decades of 20th century, the Alewife area became host to one of the more contentious environmental debates ever to oc- cur in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The widening of the Route 2 Highway and the extension of the Red Line subway pitted groups of state and city planners and concern
. Alewife Reservation & Alewife Brook master plan. Wetlands; Wetland conservation. have all left their mark on the landscape. Con- taminated or waste disposal sites are another consequence of industrial development in this area; over 50 such sites exist on the periphery of the study area. During the last decades of 20th century, the Alewife area became host to one of the more contentious environmental debates ever to oc- cur in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The widening of the Route 2 Highway and the extension of the Red Line subway pitted groups of state and city planners and concerned citi- zens against one another and brought new at- tention to the area. (MDC opposition and pub- lic protest caused the proposed highway expan- sion to be shelved; the Red Line was extended from Harvard to Alewife, not to Arlington Heights as originally planned.) The long debate over the Red Line extension helped to preserve the Reservation as an urban wild; it had been slated for use as rail yards, which were subse- quently moved underground. Today, as the remaining green spaces within the Alewife area dwindle, heightened debates have begun again about how to maintain the last sliver of the Great Swamp that still ex- ists within the Alewife Reservation, and how best to go about protecting it and the Alewife Brook Greenway from further degradation. B5. Environmental Degradation Development of the Alewife area has had its greatest influence on the area's hydrology. The gradual encroachment of the wedands by co- lonial farms, industrial development and later suburban sprawl have all whittled away the Great Swamp through ditching, diking, drain- ing, and dredging. Even so, during the middle of the 19th century, in the area that is today the Alewife Reservation, it was still possible to see a diversity of animals and FIGURE 10. Construction of the straightened concrete channel for Alewife Brook in 1911 One of the largest hydrological changes oc- curred toward the end of
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