A handful of protesters were recently arrested in Massachusetts for trespassing and refusing to leave the site of a planned 298-unit affordable housing complex being developed by King of Prussia-based O’Neill Properties Group, according to a Wicked Local Cambridge report.

Protesters expect the project to destroy a portion of the 15.6-acre Silver Maple Forest — “an integral part of the Alewife Reservation ecosystem,” the article stated — of which about half is protected by a conservation easement.

“I just think it’s really sad that this is our city’s last natural place and it’s something we should be protecting, not destroying,” protester Dana Demetrio said in the article.

A Cambridge city leader cited in the article also opposes the project, but on the more specific grounds that the development “would cause significant loss of vegetation and associated evapotranspiration, which would in turn elevate the current water table, inundating the proposed underground storm water storage basin.”

Read more about the protest and controversy surrounding the O’Neill project on Wicked Local Cambridge here.

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Top photo credit: Pavel P. via photopin cc