The next (NOT final?) session of this Helipad Public Hearing is on
November 14th, 2007 (at 8:45 PM) in the Selectmen's Meeting Room, 2nd floor front in Natick Town Hall. Public Hearing: Boston Scientific Corp. was scheduled for a Special Permit hearing before the Natick Planning Board on May 7th, 2007. Several hours before the hearing, we again discovered that we hadn't been informed. We protested, and happily the hearing was postponed to April 11th. That hearing was continued to May 23rd, to July 11th, and (after several postponements) to September 26th and October 24th at 8:00PM, all in the same location. NOTE: The Natick Planning Board requested an independent Boston Scientific Helipad sound study report. A draft was presented at the Sept. 26th 2007 hearing night, but not released. A "final" version was released on the afternoon of the Oct. 24th hearing, but was updated before the meeting. I received that slightly-changed, 1.1MB .pdf file after the meeting, and placed it online the next morning. |
This is about corporate responsibility. Many corporations help the environment. Boston Scientific Corporation thinks the right place to operate a very large and noisy helicopter is right by Cochituate State Park.
Perhaps that's not a surprise. This is the same Boston Scientific Corporation that moved its main operation from Watertown, Massachusetts to the old Carling Brewery site at Route 9 in Natick, built a blockhouse to guard the entrance road to its property and through to the Middle Pond shore of Lake Cochituate, and attempted to displace Amvets Post 79 and to usurp its lovely location within the state park for company use. When the Amvets said no, BSC solicited other veteran groups to say yes to a new joint facility on less-desirable South Pond, thus turning the current post into a minority vote. With the help of a few good state legislators, the veterans eventually managed to retain their location. To this day, Boston Scientific hasn't put in writing that the veterans are welcome to stay.Boston Scientific wants to increase its hours of operation from 7AM to 9PM, and wants to park its helicopter (and its aviation fuel) overnight just uphill of Lake Cochituate and the Cochituate Rail Trail. Its executives do not want to drive to an airport, use a smaller and quieter helicopter, or move the helipad further from the lake (where one or more buildings could buffer that noise). The application says we should adjust to the noise, because it's important and won't be injurious to most people's health. It claims that no complaints were filed, which is untrue. It says that last year's level of greediness proved insufficient for its desires, and it wants more. It also wants us to ignore the possibility that the Natick Planning Board should just say no. |
Lake Cochituate deserves responsible stewardship from its three towns and from our Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Responsible stewardship of a beleagured major public lake means reducing its noise pollution; not increasing it, and surely not to save a few Boston Scientific executives from driving to the airport. |