Dear Supporters,

Thank you for signing our petition against the Belmont Hill School’s plans to pave over a woodland. We have over 2600 signatures already, which is fantastic!

We have sent the petition to both the Belmont Hill School and the Belmont Town government demanding action. We have also organized two protests at the school so far, and over 300 individual letters have been sent to the town urging for a more sustainable alternative.

Our activism has had one small success: the gasoline fuel tanks have been removed. And the media is also starting to pay more attention: an article appeared in the Boston Globe yesterday (see link in www.belmontwild.org/media). However, the environmental destruction entailed by this development remains largely unchanged.

The school continues to push its plan to destroy the woods for a 150 car parking lot. During meetings of the Planning Board, the school has failed to explain the use for this lot, and refuses to shrink or reconfigure it to preserve the existing woodland. The Planning Board has been ineffectual. The chair seems uninterested in challenging the school and has shot down repeated demands for an environmental impact study, which is within its right to commission. News and updates are at https://www.belmontwild.org/news

We were hoping the school would be willing to compromise, but they have repeatedly refused to even discuss reducing the footprint of the development. We need to increase pressure on the school, through more protests and now, primarily, through litigation. At this point, we believe there are probably two strong arguments that we intend to advance

a) the abusive interpretation of the Dover Amendment, and
b) protections afforded to the environment under MA law.  

Our intention is to retain appropriate counsel to sue the Belmont Hill School on both fronts, and ask a court to issue an injunction.  While we understand that legal battles can be lengthy and expensive, our intention would be to advance these arguments in a rapid and efficient manner that would require approximately $10,000 --  50,000 total.  While this amount is certainly not insignificant, the fact that we have literally thousands of people opposed to the plan allows its crowd-funding to be done for a very reasonable amount per person. 

For this purpose, we've set up a gofundme site:

www.gofundme.com/f/belmontwild

Please give what you can; even a few dollars is meaningful.  Any amounts we do not use will be returned to donors.

If you want to get more involved, please email us at belmontwild@gmail.com

And please share our petition with your friends, colleagues, and family.

Thank you again for your support,
Belmont Wild