[MassHistPres] an Op.Ed in the Herald of Oct. 31.

[Dennis De Witt]

An Op.Ed in the Herald of Oct. 31.  Useful material.

Dennis De Witt


By Joseph Carvalho Green Futures
The controversy over Meditech changing its plans to locate in Freetown is unfortunate and, quite frankly, has turned ugly.

Rather than denigrating the Massachusetts Historical Commission and Secretary of State William Francis Galvin for doing their job, those who have been promoting this controversy need to take a closer look at the facts.

All that the commission asked Meditech to do is to conduct a preliminary investigation of the Peace Haven site to determine what parts of the site should be more closely researched and recorded. It didn’t request this additional investigation arbitrarily but because this is what Massachusetts law requires it to do.        

Had Meditech done what the Massachusetts Historical Commission requested, the archaeological investigations would have been completed last week. On June 29 of this year, Meditech and its archaeological consultant met with the Commission to agree on a mitigation plan for those parts of the Peace Haven site that were to be disturbed by the Meditech office building, its parking lot and roads. The Historical Commission recommended that, before proceeding with construction, additional test excavations were needed to complete an adequate program of archaeological data recovery. Meditech’s archaeological consultant said that it would take two weeks to conduct the test excavations and another 12 weeks to complete the data recovery excavations and submit a technical report to the Commission.

One of the reasons that the Commission requested this testing is that Massachusetts law requires that, when a construction project uncovers a gravesite, a project has to stop and certain procedures have to be followed to preserve and relocate the grave. The commission said that it wanted to save Meditech any delays should a grave site be discovered during construction. That doesn’t sound like obstructionist to me.

Had Meditech authorized its consultant to proceed with this work following that June meeting, the archaeological work would have been completed by now. Instead, for some inexplicable reason, Meditech said no.          

There has also been much discussion about the Historical Commission requiring Meditech to strip 20 acres of the site down to two feet. That, too, is false. Only 9 acres of the Peace Haven site will be disturbed by the construction of the Meditech building, parking lot and access roads, so there is no need to strip more than this area. Even within this area, preliminary investigations required by the Historical Commission will very likely show that not the entire site needs to be researched. The commission estimates that only 5 to 7 acres would need intensive investigation, a process that would take as little as 3 to 5 days.      

So, the question is “What do we do now?” According to a recent newspaper article, Meditech’s chairman, Neil Pappalardo, won’t meet with the Mass Historical Commission’s archaeologists, only with Massachusetts Secretary of State Galvin, the Secretary of State and head of the Historical Commission. Mr. Galvin won’t meet with Mr. Pappalardo because he says it will be pointless; he says Mr. Pappalardo needs to resolve the issue with the archaeologists. Green Futures recommends that Mr. Pappalardo get out of the way and let both Meditech’s consulting archaeologists and the Historical Commission’s archaeologists resolve the issue among themselves, as they should have done from the beginning of this fiasco.  

One last point. Let’s not forget that had the 300 acres of the Biopark been available when Meditech was looking for a site on which to build its new building, they would be under construction by now and posting available job positions. Instead, the Biopark was out of consideration  because Mayor Flanagan was reserving it for a casino which, of course, was an illegal use of that property and  never materialized. When local officials start pointing fingers, they might point them at themselves.

In announcing that it would purchase 138 acres of the most sensitive part of the Peace Haven site and develop only 20 acres of it, Meditech  showed itself to be a model corporate citizen. It was a solution that allowed jobs to be created while preserving most of a very historic site. Green Futures enthusiastically endorsed this concept and we still hope that it will be realized.  

In the meantime, those involved in feeding this controversy need to stop threatening and acting like bullies and start acting like adults.

Be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

The author is director of special projects for Green Futures, a Fall River-based environmental group.



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