Conservationists Ask Veto of Harvard Plan For Low-Rent Housing

The Harvard-sponsored Blair Pond housing project faces a crucial test this week when the state Natural Resources Department decides whether or not to approve Harvard's plan to fill in the Cambridge pond and its surrounding wetlands adjacent to the Belmont town line.

George R. Sprague '60, director of the department's Conservation Services Division which will decide on the plan, said yesterday that the proposal would either be completely rejected, approved with specific qualifications, or accepted outright.

"The third alternative is the least likely," he added.

"I don't believe they would reject the plan outright." Edward S. Gruson, Assistant to President Pusey for Community Affairs, said yesterday. "It's no Thoreau's Walden Pond."

Low Income Housing

Gruson said that the housing project is part of the 1100 units of low and middle income housing that the Harvard Corporation promised in May 1969 to build, in response to one of the central demands in that April's student strike.

"The plan was to fill in the pond completely and use the whole seven acres for this housing development," Richard T. Kriebel, a Belmont resident, said yesterday.

"We're definitely against it; so is Cambridge," Winthrop Jameson, chairman of the Belmont Conservation Commission, said yesterday. "It'll just drown Belmont," he added. After a hearing held in June the Belmont Board of Selectmen voted against the project, contending that the filling in of the pond would cause flooding in the neighborhoods adjacent to the site.

The Natural Resources Department is authorized under the Hatch Act to regulate the development of the state's wetlands based on two criteria: the effect of development on flood control and on water supply.

"We don't care what goes on the site," Sprague said. "We look at it solely in regard to the destruction of the wetlands."

Gruson said that the project would include 248 separate housing units, 20 per cent for low-income and the remainder for middle income families. He said that construction would begin as soon as Harvard's application, submitted in June, is approved by the Natural Resources Department.

"There will be a net improvement in the water runoff because of the provisions made in the development," Gruson said.

The Natural Resources Department's Conservation Services Division will base its decision on the project on studies made by the Army Corps of Engineers, the state Department of Public Health and the Water Resources Commission.

Although opposition to the housing development has centered around the contention that it will result in flooding following rainstorms, local residents are also concerned about the introduction of low-income families into the neighborhood and general over-crowding.

"It's not the most beautiful pond in Massachusetts," Sprague said. "But in a heavily congested area it's a bit of water and open space. They [Belmont residents] are vehemently opposed to the project," he concluded.