Citizen Clubs Ask Council to Oppose Building of Station

Several prominent Cambridge citizen groups attacked the proposed construction of a power transmission station on an 10.5 acre site in West Cambridge at the City Council Monday night.

The $6 million "joint venture" of the Cambridge Electric Light Company and the Boston Edison Company would establish a bulk energy receiving station on the former location of the Fresh Pond drive-in theater on Alewife Brook Parkway.

Ernest F. Graves, a representative of Cambridge Electric, told the Council that the station would consist of several small gray buildings in addition to relays and transformers and that it would omit no smokes or odors. He said that special equipment would limit noise from the station to 6.5 decibels.

George A. McLaughlin, former City Solicitor, said that the noise from the station would be at a constant level equivalent to two snowmobiles running full blast. He said that the noise would be a nuisance to one-third of the city and would affect two hospitals in the area.

"We chose this vacant area because we didn't want to remove any businesses or people from their homes," Grays said. "The City will realize a good tax income from this site and will have no services to supply to the area."

Several groups--including the League of Women Voters, the Neighborhood Nine Association, the Mystic River Watershed Association, and the Boston Society of Landscape Architects--contested Graves's presentation and urged the Council to conduct a study of the proposed transmission station which, one critic said, "will produce and distribute more problems than electricity."

Graves replied that the Planning Review had not obtained its information from the power companies and that the station would supply electricity to Cambridge, although portions of it would tie in with the regional power network on a reciprocal basis.

A motion by Councillor Henry F. Owens III to put the Council on record as opposing the power station failed by one vote. Owens said he would reintroduce the measure at the Council's next meeting.