Official Demands Building Reports

Cambridge City Councillor Marjorie C. Decker took University representatives to task for playing needless power politics at a town-gown showdown yesterday morning at City Hall.

The hearing, focusing on Harvard’s construction work on the new graduate student housing site across from Mather House, follows months of mitigation meetings where city residents have repeatedly demanded access to reports about the project’s effects on air and soil quality.

“The fact that you won’t give them to the community makes me want them even more,” Decker said, “Why choose this little battle if not to prove to the City of Cambridge that we’re not the boss of you—because that’s a little bit the game we’re playing right now?”

Cambridge’s director of environmental health, Sam Lipson, reviews the monthly evaluations, but the documents are not available to the public.

Harvard has refused—and is not required—to make the reports available to residents.

The University and Lipson say Harvard is not in violation of any environmental standards.

“We have allowed Sam Lipson unabated, unfettered access to the reports,” said Harvard’s director of community relations for Cambridge, Thomas J. Lucey. “There’s not a piece of information not known to the city.”

Still, neighbors say they fear the health effects of the exhaust, dust, and particles generated by the construction.

Decker, who is currently enrolled in a program at the Kennedy School of Government and recently declared her candidacy for state senator, stressed that she did not think Harvard was hiding anything by denying residents access to the reports, but urged the University to cooperate with the city.

“This is about using the best practices,” she told University representatives yesterday. “Make it happen because it’s the right thing to do.”

The Harvard project has long been a focal point for community resentment.

Permission to develop the property on Cowperthwaite Street and another plot along the Charles River came only after a long series of negotiations between the city, residents, and the University—and after Harvard agreed to provide 36 units of affordable housing and a public park for Cambridge.

But residents continue to voice frustration with the University’s lack of communication with locals.

Dana Lindaman, a Harvard graduate student who lives next door to the construction with his wife, 19 month-old son, Oskar, and newborn baby, said he “would like to see a little more transparency on the part of the University.”

“I took Oscar out this morning and there were fumes all over the place. I would just like to know what these things are,” Lindaman said yesterday.

Residents have also asked Harvard to use low-sulfur fuel in the trucks and on-site vehicles at the project.

In October, a state law will go into effect requiring the University to implement environmentally-friendly diesel fuel, already in use in Harvard’s shuttle system and the city’s buses.

The University says that complicated logistics—like the paucity of gas stations that sell the low sulfur fuel—make the diesel swap infeasible.

“We’re committed to using the fuel when it’s commercially available,” Lucey said. “It’s a matter of being realistic, being practical.”

—Staff writer Natalie I. Sherman can be reached at nsherman@fas.harvard.edu.