“Before The GLX, There Was I-93”
“When they did the studies for I-93, they knew that the lead would go up by a factor of four in the neighborhoods along I-93, to way above any reasonable level,” says Wig Zamore, who works with STEP to advocate for air quality issues. By the time it was built, the state was moving funds away from highways and into public transit. But federal money had already been committed, so officials pressed on with the construction of I-93.
“Boston and Cambridge remember [the time] as a watershed, positive event,” says Zamore. “In Somerville they had already gotten some commitment of federal funds, and the state decided to go ahead with I-93 notwithstanding the studies that showed it to be detrimental.”