Neighbors Outraged Dozers In Cemetery

BOSTON -- Despite the fact that the town of Framingham has yet to approve a plan by T-Mobile to put a 40-foot cell phone tower in a 150-year-old cemetery owned by the Archdiocese of Boston, neighbors said bulldozers arrived at the 11-acre site on Thursday.

Residents who live near the St. George Cemetery in the town's Cherry Street neighborhood said the dozers were spotted at the cemetery although the proposal to put the tower there is scheduled to go before the Framingham Zoning Board of Appeals on Monday.

They have said they oppose the plan because it would disturb the graveyard, which contains the final resting places of many Irish immigrants from the mid 1850s.

On Wednesday, the archdiocese issued a statement saying it would never doing anything to desecrate the site.

"The Catholic Cemetery Association of the Archdiocese of Boston takes pride in providing a fitting-resting place for our beloved dead, especially the poor, as well as sacred places of prayer, beauty and peace for those who mourn. Under no circumstances would we tolerate, nor would we act in a way that would break that bond of commitment that we have to our deceased or their loved ones," archdiocese spokesman Terry Donilon said in a statement.

T-Mobile proposed building the tower in order to reduce the "dead spots" that its customers experience while driving on a nearby portion of the Massachusetts Turnpike.

The neighbors have collected 80 signatures objecting to the proposed flagpole-style tower, which would sit on a 24-square-foot base in a woody, undeveloped part of the cemetery, about 40 yards away from marked gravesites.