01:00 AM EDT on Friday, June 8, 2007

By Maria Armental

Journal Staff Writer

CHARLESTOWN — Environmentalists sent an urgent plea for help yesterday, anticipating a state proposal to sell 50 acres of prime open space in Charlestown in what has proven to be one of the toughest budget seasons.

The House Finance Committee will vote on the state budget today . The budget proposal is expected to include the sale of the land, once part of the Burlingame State Park and now administered by the Department of Mental Health, Retardation & Hospitals as part of the Pastore Leisure Center.

The land, bordering Watchaug Pond, was purchased in 1934 through condemnation by the Metropolitan Parks Commission (predecessor of the state Department of Environmental Management) to be preserved as open space.

“It shouldn’t go into private development,” said Eugenia Marks, director of policy and publications for the Audubon Society of Rhode Island, which operates the nearby Kimball Wildlife Refuge.

The land sale, Marks said, “would degrade the quality of the [pond’s] water and further fragment the forest.

“This is not the way to balance a budget,” she added.

Joining in her call for the land’s preservation is the Charlestown Town Council, in a rare show of unity. The council members have drafted a resolution — to be submitted to local legislators — asking the state to not sell the land.

Governor Carcieri had proposed the land sale to raise $3.4 million to help balance the 2008 budget.

Amid strong opposition from environmentalists, politicians at the state and local level and the Narragansett Indian Tribe — which claims to have rights to the land — the governor asked the DEM to consider other “surplus land.”

Officially, silence ensued as legislators worked on their counterproposal to the governor’s budget. Some legislators, however, let the word out — the controversial sale would indeed be in the budget proposal, to be unveiled today at 2 p.m. in State House Room 35.

Town Council President Katharine H. Waterman said she received the news “with some degree of alarm because we understood it had been removed from the list” of state surplus land to be sold.

The sale, she said, would violate the mission of the town’s Comprehensive Plan and statewide planning, which designated the area of Watchaug Pond and Burlingame State Park a prime recreational area to be protected.

“The short-term benefit of selling the property is overshadowed by the long-term ramifications,” Waterman said.

Town officials are particularly concerned because the property abuts the Narragansett Indian Tribe’s land, which the tribe is trying to place into federal trust. They fear the Narragansetts may attempt to open a casino on their land. That parcel would give them access to the pond, and would place them only one parcel away from access to Route 1.

“Of all the bars in all the world, why this one?” council Vice President Harriet A. Allen said, paraphrasing Humphrey Bogart’s line in Casablanca.

The town Conservation Commission has proposed to join efforts with the Parks and Recreation Commission to develop recreational activities along the pond area — possibly relocating there the summer day camp that the Parks and Recreation Commission currently sponsors in Ninigret Park — and develop passive recreation, such as walking trails, on the rest of the property.

The town has not presented any plans to purchase the property at this point, but “we’d be interested in working with state agencies to institute such a program,” said Lillian Arnold, the committee’s chairwoman.