What’s Old Is New Again: Citizens Seeking to Form Group

People arriving for the Town Council Spring Forum Tuesday night were greeted by Point Shirley resident Dawn Manning, who was distributing leaflets for a community meeting to be held Friday, March 21 at 6:30 p.m. at the Point Shirley Association Hall, 1032 Shirley St.

Manning, along with residents Kathleen Cappuccio, John Stasio, and John Vitagliano, cited on the leaflet that the purpose of the meeting is to discuss “the formation of a Citizens Advisory Committee which will focus on citizens concerns relating to the Deer Island Treatment Plant and the new MWRA Co-Digestion Pilot Program.”

As we watched Dawn hand out her leaflets, it occurred to us that some things never change. For more than 50 years, Winthrop residents have been directly impacted by the “skunkworks” on Deer Island (as our long-time, late   publisher, Andrew P. Quigley, referred to the various sewage treatment plants that have been built on Deer Island over the years). Most notably, in the early 1980s Peg Riley spearheaded a group that came to be known as the Concerned Citizens Group, who weighed in on the issues surrounding the construction of a new treatment plant by the MDC, which later became the project we now have under the auspices of the MWRA.

So here we are one again, with the MWRA this time seeking to implement a program that will being more truck traffic through our heavily-congested little town.

We applaud Dawn and the others for stepping forward to bring this issue before the public and we urge as many of their fellow residents as possible to become involved in the process and make their thoughts heard.

The MWRA is holding a public forum on Wednesday, March 26 at 7 p.m. at the Cummings School Cafetorium that will focus on the new food waste pilot program that will result in additional truck traffic. MWRA Executive Director Frederick Laskey is expected to be in attendance in that meeting. We know the forum will be done professionally and that Winthrop residents will benefit from this important discussion with Mr. Laskey and his team of experts from the MWRA.