Wednesday, April 12, 2000
Rebuttal to Barry, Ward
TO THE EDITOR:
I am writing because your readers deserve to read a rebuttal to Mr. William Barry's
and Mr. John Ward's letters to the Editors, respectively captioned "An Airport
on their Agenda" and "Keep NAS Plan Moving Forward." Your readers deserve to have
falsehoods in these letters exposed and to learn the truth. Both letters relate
to the former So. Weymouth Naval Station and its reuse.
First, let me explain who I am, something Messrs. Barry and Ward should have done,
but failed to do. I am a founder of Compare, which stands for citizens opposing
the megamall and the proposed access road extension. I am one of these thousands
of citizens who oppose the megamall because it would be very bad, very detrimental
to the area. I am a spokesman for Compare and have acted as moderator at Compare
public meetings including the one Mr. Ward writes about and attended (for a time
only) in Rockland.
Contrary to what Messrs. Barry and Ward falsely allege, Compare has no hidden
airport agenda. As all of Compare literature states, its purposes, its agenda,
are to oppose the megamall and access road and prevent them from becoming realities,
plus to cause a rethinking of the reuse of the space at the base where the megamall
would go.
If Mr. Ward had looked at Compare's literature at the meeting in Rockland, he
would know the truth and that his allegation is false. I would assume that Mr.
Barry, as a diligent Weymouth Town Councilor from, and representing part of So.
Weymouth, would also be familiar with Compare's literature and know his allegation
is not true.
Both Mr. Barry and Mr. Ward pointedly fail to discuss in their letters that they
were members of the Naval Air Station Planning Committee. They embraced The Mills
Corp. megamall reuse of part of the base without critically investigating its
horrific environmental impacts, including choking traffic overload, and noise
and light pollution, and whether the megamall should be located in such a densely
populated area.
Perhaps worse, the planning committee's written materials explaining the reuse
plan conspicuously failed to inform the public that a vote for the plan was a
vote for the megamall.
In his campaign for council, Mr. Barry apparently saw a need to change his position
on the megamall and he announced his opposition to it. One would think that he
would now welcome Compare's effort and not seek to undermine it. He knows that
I never advocated a commercial airport. So why does he spread the lie?
As for Mr. Ward ... he continues to lobby for an extremely bad idea, the megamall.
It's too bad that he doesn't take a hard look at its horrific environmental impacts
and its unsuitability for the area. If he did, he would undoubtedly become a megamall
opponent.
Henry T. Dunker
Weymouth