The Friends of the Blue Hills is working with a statewide coalition to update the state bottle bill. Updating the bottle bill would increase recycling and help clean up the Blue Hills – and all our parks. The current return bottle law has been successful for those containers that it covers. Eighty percent of the bottles and cans covered under the current bottle bill are recycled. But since the bill passed in 1982 we’ve started to use many new kinds of bottles that are not covered under the law, like water and sports bottles. Only 20 percent of these new [...]

Updated July 3, 2014

The Friends of the Blue Hills is working to help protect you and your family from a growing problem that faces our community: more and more people are getting sick with Lyme disease. Through our Healthy Forests; Healthy People campaign we are helping raise awareness in children and adults about what they can do to protect themselves from Lyme disease and how our own health is linked to the health of the forests. If we keep our forests healthy, we keep ourselves healthy. Learn more about about how to prevent Lyme disease.

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A private company has proposed building 276 housing units right next to the portion of the Blue Hills called Fowl Meadow on Brush Hill Road in Milton.  The five-story buildings are proposed on what the state calls an “Area of Critical Environmental Concern.”  We call this forested land ‘critical’ because the plants and animals of Fowl Meadow’s wetland depend on this area for food and habitat.  Plus the higher land filters the water the runs down to the wetlands and Neponset River.  When the existing forest is bulldozed to create 276 housing units and forested land is leveled to create [...]

In 2003 the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority began developing plans to convert the eastern half of the Blue Hills Reservoir into two 10 million gallon buried drinking water storage tanks.  The reservoir, built in the 1950’s had been inactive as a public drinking water source since 1981, but served as a protected wetlands area in the reservation along scenic Chickatawbut Road.  The 16 acre reservoir was home to at least five species of native fish, and served as a vital wetlands ecosystem in the Blue Hills Reservation.

Friends of the Blue Hills, with the help of local legislators and citizens, [...]

As part of our continuing efforts to keep our members informed and our political leaders responsive, Friends of the Blue Hills held a forum for candidates running in 2010 for the position of State Senate.  About 100 Blue Hills advocates attended the forum to meet candidates, Canton Selectman Bob Burr (R) and Senator Brian A. Joyce (D) and hear how they have supported the Blue Hills and open space in our communities.