For people who have never been to the city of Holyoke, Massachusetts there is one landmark standing watch over the city that immediately draws your eye, the unmistakable slope of Mt. Tom. While many may not know this mountain, most of you probably know the fable of "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas", well Mt. Tom is the mountain from that story. Dr. Suess was born about twenty minutes away in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 2014, I started an initiative to inform people in my community about how the Mt. Tom coal plant was polluting the Connecticut River by dumping toxic waste into the river for seventeen years without a permit to do so.
Before Mt. Tom Coal Plant shut down Holyoke's asthma rates were twice as high as any other city in the state, and that is mostly because of the coal plant's smokestack spewing mercury. It took a long time, countless sleepless nights, and one trespassing arrest to complete our goal of shutting down the coal plant. Seeing a solar farm put in its place was some much-needed justification, I was happy and retreated to my hole because no one was messing with my mountain or my river. (The full story about what happened with the Mt. Tom Coal Plant can be found here, this article was published in French and English please scroll down for English.)
Mt. Tom is a beautiful mountain that has its own microclimate and it is home to over 400 endangered plants and species. There is one stain on this mountain that is unmistakable and that is the basalt quarry that abuts the old ski trails, The company that operated the quarry is the Mt. Tom Rock Company, which is owned by Mt. Tom Inc, formerly known as Mt. Ski Area Inc. This company is owned by Matthew L. Donohue and Timothy P. Kennedy and in 2002 Massachusetts Department of Conservation purchased 144.7 acres on Mt Tom for conservation for Mt. Tom to be preserved in its "natural state." I don't understand how allowing Donohue and Kennedy to mine basalt from the side of Mt. Tom for ten years had anything to do with preserving Mt. Tom in its natural state. My question to the people in power who allowed Mt. Tom to be mined is... was it worth it?. The Department of Conservation and Recreation is now trying to put their superhero capes on and save Mt. Tom when they are the state agency that allowed Mt. Tom to be mined in the first place? Before Mt. Tom Rock Company stopped scarring the mountain they owed over 23,000 in property taxes, now the company owes the city of Holyoke over 400,000 in property taxes and an outstanding loan of more than 93,000. Holyoke is not a rich city and Holyoke's public school system was recently taken into the state's control, this is a city that could use every dollar in taxes they are owed.
The timeline of events is very perplexing, if not revealing because the city of Holyoke imposed a lien on Holyoke Rock Company in 2012 for over 23,000 in back property taxes, yet they never took the company to court or moved to seize the property. Recently Donohue and Kennedy filed paperwork with the city to turn the old basalt quarry into a "clean fill site." This action prompted the state to finally take the steps to seize the 16-acre site. On the very same date that the state was supposed to take over the site, Donohue and Kennedy filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy which delayed the takeover. Donohue and Kennedy are due to appear in Bankruptcy Court last week in Springfield, Massachusetts.
These land disputes are common among companies and state agencies and are not abnormal, but the land deal between Donohue, Kennedy, and the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Holyoke is pure corruption in its finest form. In 2002 when Mt. Tom was being carved up and sold Holyoke Boys and Girls Club bought 21 acres of land that had the old ski slopes, ski lodge, and wave pool for 300,000 dollars from the Mt. Tom Company which is the entity that owned most of the mountain before Donohue and Kennedy took over in 2019. The Boys & Girls Club never did anything with the property, it just sat there, not a single weed was pulled for nearly 20 years. It begs the question, did the Boys & Girls Club ever plan the develop the property? Eileen Cavanaugh is the Chief Executive Officer of the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Holyoke and her brother is Matthew L. Donohue. Granted Ms. Cavanaugh recused herself from recent negotiations between her club and her brother's company, but are we really to assume that she did not influence negotiations? It was all assumptions until the Boys & Girls Club sold their land valued at nearly 1,000,000 dollars to Donohue and Kennedy's company for 100,000 dollars, nothing to see here folks...carry on.
Why should the same company that profited from digging the quarry be allowed to make more money off the city of Holyoke by charging people to dump clean soil in the old quarry site when they haven't paid their back property taxes? The Department of Conservation and Recreation estimated that it will take 23 trucks a day for twenty years to fill the old quarry with clean soil. The pollution that will be caused by trucks traveling up the mountain over twenty years is reason enough to conclude that making the old Mt. Tom quarry a clean fill site is a really bad idea. The quarry has been inactive for nearly 10 years since then nature has adapted to the inactive quarry, falcons are using it to nest and salamanders are as well, it would be wrong to destroy the eco-systems thriving in and around the quarry site.
I will not just sit back and watch as pompous fat pocketed suits and bureaucrats destroy this land any further. The community is well aware of the whispers of corruption swirling on Mt. Tom and we are prepared to protect this land by any means necessary just as we did with the Mt. Tom Coal Plant.
Writen by Joziah Thayer