On its official Web site, the City of Manchester displays an image of a completed Waterford "luxury" apartment building. This picture of a '"finished product" tells nothing about the environmental devastation that was necessary to construct this building and the other buildings in the complex. Most of the photographs shown below were taken in the summer of 2002, during the early stages in land clearing and road construction for the apartment project. They provide information about the drastic chances in the landscape that took place during this time. The last photograph shown was taken at a time when several buildings neared completion. It provides evidence for violations of wetlands protection laws that occurred during the construction activities.

With the exception of unspecialized wetlands, the area designated to contain the 8 apartment buildings complex was nearly completely forested. The first five photographs shown below were taken on Countryside Boulevard as an entrance to the apartment complex-to-be was established and road construction got underway.

The photograph on the left shows an early stage in these activities, and the photograph on the right shows how modern logging equipment can quickly displace an entire mature tree.

As seen in the left photograph below, the tree removal and subsequent log formation was followed by the frequent departure of large log-containing trucks from the property. Shortly afterwards, as seen in the right photograph below, masses of huge boulders began to appear near the property's entrance.

 

The photograph at left was taken further into the interior of the property at a slightly later date. It is clear that extensive habitat loss had taken place, since every bit of greenery has vanished in the central area shown. Here, the property resembles a "moonscape" where lifeforms cannot exist.

Prior to the development, the Manchester Planning Board received a number of detailed requests from the NH Sierra Club to consider a year's moratorium on the residential projects. This interval would have provided the opportunity for biological studies of the area. It would then have been possible to consider what type of protection was warrented for the various species and habitats that were found. However, despite numerous opportunities to take the requests into consideration, the Planning Board did not even have the courtesy to discuss them. They were completely ignored.

The final photograph on this page was taken in the spring of 2003, as several of the apartment buildings neared completion. This photograph was taken behind a building that was near the final stages of construction. A portion of a wetlands is visible in the top half of the photograph. The incline leading towards the wetlands appears in the lower part of the image.

In the center of the incline, a collapsed and crumpled silt fence (black in color) can be seen wrapped around some of the stones protruding from the soil. Clearly, the various substances released by construction activities would have little difficulty in making their way into the wetlands and a violation of one of the most basic wetlands protection requirements has occurred.