In the dumps

Part 4

by Kristen Lombardi

Even on sunny days, a stroll through Green Hill Park seems a bittersweet experience. The park center boasts a muddied pavilion that dominates a sun-scorched landscape. The lawn hides items forgotten or tossed aside -- a baby pacifier, a McDonald's ketchup pack, police tape. Park-goers spot disrepair in the rusty swings, seatless benches, and deteriorating barbecue pits; the kind of conditions that anger coalition members. "I swear [officials] must be driving through this park with blinders on," says coalition member and city-council candidate Michael Troiano.

Despite a dismal center, park-goers can wander onto a trail and witness Green Hill's natural beauty. Old oak, hickory, and ash trees hover above Lucy's Lane. These scenes remind coalition members of a park's value; on a recent hike, Dusoe stood atop a rocky ledge overlooking the horizon and said, "The central part of the park is damn ugly, but up here I can enjoy the park for what it is -- an escape."

This is what the Green family hoped for when it sold the city its 549-acre estate. The 1905 deed stipulates officials maintain at least 400 acres for "shrubs, lawns, gardens and whatever makes a gentleman's country place attractive." Failure to care for Green Hill as park land would result in the property's return to family heirs, the deed states.

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"All we're doing is using the same logic as we used in capping the Ballard Street site." -- DPW Commissioner Robert Moylan

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The city's satisfied the condition, even though it handed over 170 acres for unconventional park uses over the years. Green Hill Golf Course has taken 140 acres since the 1930s. Air National Guard carved out 10 acres in the '50s for military storage. Then, the 17-acre landfill operation began in the '60s.

Edith Morgan, also president of the Brittan Square Neighborhood Association, has lived adjacent to Green Hill for about 20 years. She has fond memories of her family feeding ducks and swimming at the park. But lately, she talks more of her struggle against the city's misuse of Green Hill than her enjoyment of it.

"It's been a step-by-step fighting of [park] degradation," Morgan says. Abuse continues with a current leaf-mulching operation, and two water towers, she says. Last summer, Morgan and neighbors stopped officials from draining pond water to sprinkle the golf course. "We've continuously battled to remind [officials] this is a park."

The first struggle occurred on the legal front, when 10 citizens filed a lawsuit against the city for its landfill operation. The city had used an abandoned quarry in the park to dump building materials, then officially opened the dumpsite in 1969. Citizens sued soon after, arguing the operation violated the deed's condition.

"We were concerned about the precedent of a landfill in a park," says Larry Freed, a coalition member who helped file the lawsuit.

In 1972, a Worcester Superior Court judge ordered the landfill be shut down. The judge ruled the city could dump for a six-month period because citizens had failed to prove "substantial damage to the environment by destruction or impairment of a natural resource," states the decree. Still, the judge ordered the city devise a recreational plan for the area; the city spent $25,000 on designs that included football fields and tennis courts.

Eighteen years have passed and the city's never carried out its recreational plan, known as the 1979 Master Plan. This makes veteran advocates like Freed suspicious of officials, questioning their current motives with unremitting cynicism: "The city's never backed down on wanting to run the landfill, and the current plan is another example," he says.

Certainly, the city's proposal is nothing new. In 1989, former DPW Commissioner F. Worth Landers suggested using street waste at the same dumpsite because the city needed a waste-disposal site. The administration had focused on money, saying the proposal would save the city $600,000 a year by allowing it to divert the cost of transporting street wastes.

Many of today's coalition members protested the plan back then, and the opposition prompted the city to offer dumping its street waste as fill at the Ballard Street landfill. Advocates say each city landfill proposal has placed a natural resource at risk, and because officials haven't gotten the message, advocates say, they're shifting their fight to the political front.

"Residents in the past took the legal route and lost. We're taking the route of publicity and politics, and we won't go away," says Morgan.

On to part 5 Kristen Lombardi can be reached at klombardi[a]phx.com.