Rarely do public outdoor amenities come to us without much advocacy and hard work. We are fortunate to consider a beautiful state Alewife master plan for outdoor conservation and recreation for North Cambridge, Medford, Somerville and East Arlington. It was developed with great public support from Friends of Alewife Reservation, other environmental agencies and nonprofits, ad hoc groups and many citizens for over a three-year period, interfacing regularly with the Department of Conservation and Recreation and the city of Cambridge. The top consulting planners from The Bioengineering Group of Salem helped prepare the Alewife Reservation Master Plan, and recently brought ecological restoration to Fresh Pond Reservation.

A gathering in November by the DCR at the Arlington Library was a long-awaited public meeting to discuss an important phase of the Alewife master plan in Somerville and Arlington along the west side of Alewife Brook, which then connects to Cambridge. Many citizens, friends and neighbors want recreational and bike or pedestrian connections to the Alewife T stop, to the Mystic River, and to many other points east and west of Cambridge and Belmont. They want biodiversity and enhancements to Alewife Brook, and more public discourse about the multi-purpose pathway connection between Somerville, East Arlington and Medford along Alewife Brook. The pathways will improve the quality of life with fewer cars and help protect the area from debris and inappropriate homeless use.

While the DCR wants to repossess public property, confiscated over time by private parties, it offers Arlington and North Cambridge residents an opportunity to restore our deteriorating open spaces and to make a very much needed strolling and biking connection among four important sister cities along the watershed, from Lexington to Mystic River through the Alewife Reservation. The west side pathway at Henderson Bridge near the Cambridge-Somerville border is compacted dirt, and the DCR proposes to restore the banks and to develop a boardwalk along the path to the Mystic, restoring natural vegetation and re-creating animal habitat. Archeological and historical connections will be made as well. The area is the site of a pre-colonial fishing weir, and a 19th-century alms house. After the Lexington-Concord battle, the British exited over the Mass. Ave. bridge, a site worthy of national historical recognition.

The flooding and sewage problems that accumulate in the Broadway and Mass. Ave. section of the watershed will be attenuated over time by municipal and state plans for water quality and quantity. Improvement plans are already funded and ready to go forward..

Just as the DCR’s Charles River Reservation restoration and bikeway in Watertown and Newton improved safety, sanitation and recreation; here in the Mystic River Watershed, biking and passive recreation connections to Arlington, Somerville, Cambridge and Belmont will also improve life in our crowded corridor. Without pedestrian connections, these open land areas will eventually be zoned for buildings and will create more thermal heat centers. The brook and Little River are now important fish channels for the chain of life in the oceans. We will be in the process of preserving ancient waterways for a diminishing and essential aquatic species, the Alewife herring, not to mention diverse and unusual species of many mammals and birds that live in and among this waterways corridor.

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