Kennedy Library

THE DECISION yesterday not to build the museum portion of the John F. Kennedy Library in Harvard Square is a victory for the residents of Cambridge in their ten-year effort to block the $27 million complex. The Kennedy Library Corporation has realized that the General Services Administration's environmental impact statement, released January 6, would not stand the scrutiny of the community or the courts.

The disclosure this week that the drafts of the report passed through the hands of Stephen Smith, head of the Kennedy Library Corporation and brother-in-law to the late president, has destroyed the report's credibility as a technical document. Robert T. Griffin, the GSA administrator who sent the documents to Smith before the agency's experts had examined it, is a long time Democrat who it appears, placed his loyalty to the Kennedy family over his responsibility to the people of Cambridge. He should resign or be removed from his post.

The GSA has also refused to make public the documents that Griffin allowed the Kennedy Library Corporation to screen. The agency must release this material and records of all its correspondence with C.E. Maguire, the consultant firm which researched the impact statement. Only through this disclosure will Cambridge be able to settle definitively whether the GSA drastically changed Maguire's original report or influenced the firm's findings.

The published report itself is based on several faulty assumptions. The GSA said that air pollution in the Square would not be a problem when the library opens in 1978 because of stricter government controls on auto pollution. President Ford, however, has asked recently that the implementation of laws requiring new emission control devices be delayed to conserve gasoline use. If his proposal is adopted, the library will increase air pollution in an area that has carbon monoxide levels presently in excess of federal standards 60 to 70 per cent of the time.

The traffic estimates are based upon an unrealistic 3.5 passengers per car. The report further estimates that traffic on Boylston Street will be increased by only 5.5 per cent, but fails to provide an analysis of how the additional traffic will affect already existing congestion. Until this data is released we can only assume that the increase in traffic is limited to 5.5 per cent because Boylston will be saturated with cars and traffic will back up onto Memorial Drive.

These inadequacies in the report left it open to easy attack and legal battles which might last for several years. Faced with these prospects the Kennedy Corporation abandoned its attempt to sell the whitewash GSA report. Without the museum, the library will draw few new visitors to Cambridge and will not destroy the character of the Square. It appears that, after ten years of battle, the community has slain this Goliath.