Is parks developing the reservoir anyway?

This morning Heidi, Jean and I went to the reservoir. On our way back to the parking lot Heidi and I stopped to talk to a couple of surveyor's working near one of the basins. They were standing at the edge of Vermont Place, to the north of the parking lot and facing towards the west berm of basin 3. I don't know anything about surveyor's marks, so I took photos of the new, spray painted markings. I could be wrong, but the meaning seemed obvious. For about 100 yards there were "X"s that had a -> at one end and a <- at the other. So the running path had a string of marks that looked sort of like this:

-> X X X X X X X <-

We walked over to the surveyors and I said to one guy, "So, is this where they are going to knock a hole in the hillside for access to the new ballfields." He said, yes. He volunteered other information about the project. One interesting opinion was, "Those trees are all falling down, anyway, because of the basin's clay liner." Hmmm. I asked him if he had been into the basins and he said no, but they would soon because they have to survey the interiors! I am really concerned. When they go down into the basins to survey (and I'm not sure why they even have to) they are going to cut down trees. This may be just the excuse the Department of Parks and Recreation is looking for to let some of their workers go nuts with a chainsaw. Also, someone has gone through the bisecting paths and started to cut down many small trees and shrubs. There were two surveyor marks on the original wrought iron fences along one of the paths. In addition, there were some small trees that had been cut down on the berm within basin 2.

I am concerned that the city plans to move ahead with destroying part (or all) of the habitats, despite the community's desire to keep it as a nature preserve.