None was sold! Remember that! But the blasting can be felt on Lexington St. near the high school!

And where will the deforestation stop? Like I said, there are orange markers well into the Park.

The area I'm asking about has already been stripped, in a lot of places down to the bedrock. What is happening there?

I went to the meeting organized by the developers at the Banks School back in May. There was a lot of talk about the blasting. One thing that they are doing in this project is to move the NSTAR power lines from their current location (right down the middle of the Polaroid property) to the eastern edge of their property. Of course, the eastern edge of the (former) Polaroid property is the western boundary of Prospect Hill Park. So the power line corridor will soon be right next to Prospect Hill Park.

The developers are not allowed to put any buildings in the power line corridor (NSTAR easement) but they can use that space for driveways and parking lots. I’m guessing that the blasting ("mining") is being done to level out that area so that it can be used for parking lots in the future (Phase 2). In any event, none of the work involving the power lines can take place inside Prospect Hill Park, but the developers can basically do what they want on the land that they own abutting Prospect Hill Park.

How much of the wooded land is the owners' and how much is Prospect Hill Park? How much more of the woods will they take? Why are they moving the power lines?

The area that is cleared is already far larger than just the area surrounding old Polaroid. The cleared area stretches to the hotels or businesses that sre already abutting the Park far to the northeast of old Polaroid. It doesn't seem like a construction site; it seems more like a strip mining operation with their rock crushers and sorted hills of different sized rocks.

I think they've basically cleared up to the property line. You might want to look at the "Maps Online" section of the city's website to try to figure out where the boundaries are.

Why move the power lines? So that they can put buildings where the power lines are now. After the power lines are moved, they'll be doing a lot more blasting where the power lines are now. This has been reported in several news articles.

There is some tree clearing going on in the southwestern area of Prospect Hill Park. Back in the 1960’s (during the administration of Mayor Rhodes), the City of Waltham sold an easement to Polaroid over about 8 acres of land in the park. According to the terms of the easement, Polaroid (or any future owner) could use those 8 acres for driveways and local utilities. The current developers are building their new access driveway (called the “Relocated Boundary Road”) through that section of Prospect Hill Park.

Personally, I wish that that easement had never been sold to Polaroid. But at the time, it was seen as a way to help bring in more jobs to Waltham. Indeed, Polaroid provided quite a few good-paying jobs with decent benefits for many years. But what about today? All those jobs are gone (as well as the pensions). I’m of the opinion that we need to do all that we can to protect our parks and our open spaces FOREVER.