State nixes replication of reservoir

The drive to get the state to replace the drained Blue Hills Reservoir by creating another body of water appears to be dead after the governor's office told the Friends of the Blue Hills last week that the administration would not support the group's request.

The decision runs counter to what many local officials advocated, and especially disappointed Friends of the Blue Hills, which began its fight 10 years ago, initially to prevent the draining of the Blue Hills Reservoir on Chickatawbut Road in Quincy. In an e-mail to supporters last Thursday, the group chided Governor Deval Patrick for allowing the Blue Hills Reservation to become "the place where our state's proud tradition of wetlands protection was tossed aside."

"A decision was made, and a bad one in our opinion," Thomas Palmer, the group's president, said in a telephone interview last week. He later added: "We are at the end of the line. We have no resources left to get a better outcome."

The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, owner of the reservoir, pumped out the water two years ago after receiving state environmental regulatory approval, creating a roughly 16-acre crater. The authority plans to place two 40-foot-high, 10 million-gallon water tanks in one half of the basin and then cover them with soil and grass. The other half will refill naturally with water from the Blue Hills and will be restocked with fish.

The $37 million project is intended to keep the region's emergency water supply safe from contamination from wildlife or terrorists, but for many area residents, the bolstered security robs them of the serenity of watching a sunset on an expanse of clear blue water in the heart of a state park, which they contend should be free of development.

Now, they say, they will be confronted with something less natural -- a pool of water at the foot of a heap of dirt.

In deciding not to take up the Friends of the Blue Hills' cause, the governor's office essentially agreed with a Norfolk Superior Court ruling in 2005 and a state Department of Environmental Protection decision in 2003 that, since the Blue Hills Reservoir was man-made, it did not fit into the state's Wetlands Protection Act, which requires the replacement of lost wetlands. The reservoir was created in the 1950s in an area once known as Twin Brook Swamp, but hasn't been used as a water supply since 1981 because of pollution by gulls who roosted nearby.

"[The Department of Environmental Protection's] approval is final, and neither I nor MassDEP has the authority to reconsider or rescind that approval, absent extraordinary circumstances, none of which are present here," the state s ecretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs, Ian Bowles, wrote on behalf of Patrick in a letter to the Friends of the Blue Hills dated July 2. The correspondence was received by the group last week.

Bowles went on to state that he believed the MWRA struck a healthy balance between protecting the area's drinking water and being conscious of the surrounding environment. He noted that the smaller reservoir, once filled again with water, will be open to the public for fishing and swimming, and that the MWRA will improve habitats for fish, turtles, frogs, and other wildlife.

"Although these measures are not as comprehensive as those you have proposed, we believe that, taken in their entirety, the wetland resources after the project will be comparable in value to what exists now," Bowles wrote.

The Friends of the Blue Hills, in a 17-page letter to the governor on May 21, had asked Patrick either to cancel the tank project or suspend it until the MWRA agreed to replace the 8 acres of lost open water. The group suggested excavating an area of the park in Canton, the site of abandoned ramps for Interstate 95 and Route 128.

Mayor William J. Phelan of Quincy supported replacing the lost water, and legislation to that effect was filed last year by state representatives Bruce Ayers (D-Quincy), Robert Coughlin (D-Dedham), Walter Timilty (D-Milton), William Galvin (D-Canton), and Geraldine Creedon (D-Brockton).

The project is expected to be complete in 2010. MWRA spokeswoman Ria Convery said that, although the reservoir will be smaller, it will have better public access to nearby parking, and hiking trails, making it more enjoyable for recreation.

"We are going full blast because this is a project that will benefit the community in terms of public safety, water supply, and aesthetics," she said.

But Palmer said the project comes at a big price.

"That project betrays more than a 100-year-old pledge of not developing in the park," he said. "A reservoir bears more of a resemblance to the natural area than a huge mound of dirt filled with concrete."

James Vaznis can be reached at jvaznis@globe.com.