In 2007 the city and Eastern Minerals, the salt company on the Chelsea waterfront, signed an agreement that created Port Park, gave the public access to the company’s shoreline, and set up a neighborhood improvement fund for District 6. Councillor Giovanni Recupero asked in December what was in the fund. The answer, in January, was that the city was still waiting to find out.
The agreement
The memorandum of agreement, attached to the City Manager’s January response, established Port Park on Eastern Minerals’ land and kept maintenance of it with the company. It obligates Eastern Minerals to deposit between $5,000 and $15,000 a year into a neighborhood fund, with the amount conditioned on the configuration of the company’s cargo operations and on MWRA access to the site. It committed the company to $500,000 toward the turf at Highland Park. And it committed the city not to oppose amending General Laws chapter 85, section 7A, the statute that governs the salt pile’s operations near the bridge.
The fund has been tapped once, in 2019, when the city drew $36,000 to help pay for improvements at Quigley Park. The City Manager’s January letter does not give a current balance or a total of deposits since 2007. It says the city has asked Eastern Minerals for the figures.
The relationship
The same letter announces that the city’s annual gala would be held at Port Park on July 9 “and is being graciously supported by Eastern Minerals.” The company also gave $1,500 to the gala’s sponsor list, $10,000 to the police department, and the mobile LED screen that showed the World Cup games on Broadway. Eastern Minerals, the salt terminal that supplies road salt to much of eastern Massachusetts and whose piles are the first thing a driver sees from the Tobin Bridge, has been a generous corporate neighbor, and it has also been the subject of a decade of complaints about salt dust, truck traffic and the view.
Five to fifteen thousand dollars a year is a small obligation, and it is one the city apparently stopped tracking. A fund set up in 2007 should have somewhere between $95,000 and $285,000 in it before the Quigley Park draw, if every payment was made. The council’s question was reasonable, and nine months later it has not been answered with a number. The fund balance and the deposit history since 2007 remain unpublished.