Speaker Tom Finneran took one for the home team, again, this week.

At issue is the state's efforts to take control of a long-blighted section of industrial land along the Neponset River. The Sax property, as it's come to be known, is a sprawling, burned-out old dumping ground that greets Dorchester residents and visitors alike like a slap in the face. It's the first thing many people see of the neighborhood while driving north from the South Shore.

In 2000, Speaker Finneran quarterbacked a legislative line-item that put aside $7.5 million to acquire the old dump and turn it into something nice. Could be a park. Maybe a youth center or a ballfield.

Whatever it will be, what's more important is what it won't be: an eyesore along one of the city's great, underappreciated natural resources, the Neponset River.

A local businessman, Jim Schlager, is now suing Finneran- along with City Councillor Maureen Feeney and the Cedar Grove Civic Association. He claims the trio teamed up to 'steal' the land away from him, land that he wanted to buy so he could relocate his tow yard that is now next door. Soon, Schlager will move to a new industrial site in Quincy.

This week, a Boston Herald business columnist championed Schlager's cause in a column that blasted the Dorchester rep for using state funds to take the land. The argument, essentially, was that Finneran did it to please his relatives, who live nearby; that he did it to stick it to Schlager; that he did it in spite of the fact that the land is contaminated and will cost even more money to clean up.

The well-meaning columnist noted that Dorchester just got a new park, in the form of the Pope John Paul II Park, just downstream from the Sax site.

People in Dorchester know the whole truth.

Speaker Finneran's intervention on Granite Avenue was not done to spite anyone, not even Mr. Schlager. Instead, like most state reps, he acted at the behest of his many constituents who long ago tired of looking at their debris-strewn waterfront and wondering 'what could have been'. His actions were consistent with the work of other state reps before him, who used the power of eminent domain and the state coffers to acquire waterfront property that should be available to everyone.

Is the land contaminated? Almost certainly it is.

But so was the much-celebrated Pope John Paul II Park and the new MDC bike path that is going in right now along the river. That's what happens when old-school industrial uses are allowed to go unchecked for too long.

The bottom line is this: after years of neglect, Dorchester deserves to have a beautfiul waterfront, from one end of the neighborhood to the other. Industrial uses along the Neponset are not any more welcome here than they are anywhere else in the state.

What is better along the Neponset shore: a dump site and auto body tow lot, or green space and parkland? Both now and forever, and into perpetuity?

Thankfully, Speaker Finneran not only understood all of this, but acted on it. Dorchester is indebted to him for his foresight and continuing commitment to restoring the Neponset River and its environs.

- Ed Forry