XXX Don’t clear-cut the forest bordering Cambridge’s Reservoir!

How is this not absurd?

3 years ago Featured

Research shows that trees have far more positive impact on climate change than solar farms built on formerly treed locations. Indeed, they are essential to preserve ecological health, including benefits to drinking water, carbon sequestration, wildlife health, tick control, and human welfare.

Strange to see this stupidity in Cambridge of all places.

Solar energy installations of this scale are industrial uses. They belong in industrial use zones. It's high time to stop treating public open space as a convenient low cost siting areas for the project du jour.

We need forests and solar, not one or the other.

I am writing about the Tracer Lane Solar Projects. The developer petitioning the planning board to cut 5.5. acres of forest to install a solar farm is counterproductive. Forests are much better than solar farms in helping with climate change. In addition you will be destroying the habitat of the thousands of animals the forest shelters. Please say no and instead request that solar panels be installed on existing structures. Thanks

For the sake of our precious ecosystems that encompass plant, animal, and human life, this planned forest cutting has to be stopped. Read the science. Find an appropriate location. We need those trees.

Don't cut down the woods!

Let us first use up all the non-green spaces we can for solar panels -- parking garages, rooftops, etc. -- only then should we even discuss clearing trees!

Not a good idea.

Eliminating carbon-sinking trees in the name of green-ness is false economy. Start putting these solar panels above every paved parking lot and flat roof first.

We must not cut down any more mature trees that sequester carbon if we are to successfully fight the climate crisis. We need both trees and solar but not one at the expense of the other. Please move the solar project to already developed land.

Please use already degraded land for solar

Such destruction of the earth like this is NOT "green" nor "renewable". I believe people who initiate such efforts are basically profit-motivated, which is what got us, the environment into the place it is now!

Don’t cut these precious trees! Find another place!

Since tree roots help filter impurities from groundwater, given normal periods of rainfall and water levels being lower than pond embankments, the trees found at and near Fresh Pond are especially helpful in purifying the drinking water.

Forests not only sequester carbon. They also support thousands of living creatures. We already have a very bad biodiversity crisis. Please don't make it worse.

The Tracer Lane Solar Project should be relocated. This forest not only protects the Cambridge drinking water supply and provides stormwater mitigation, but also contributes to the regional biodiversity habitat and climate mitigation through its natural systems. Solar panels will produce electricity but could be sited elsewhere for a net environmental gain- versus loss.

We need our trees more than ever now that we face an unprecedented climate emergency. We need clean water and undisturbed ecosystems to heal the blunders of man. This is not the place for industrial solar panels . Stop this nonsense, soon there will be no time to be sorry !

This is contrary to state and federal policy to protect trees!