Editor,
An article published in the Journal Tribune on Dec. 24 (“Ecology School plans to break ground in spring”) requires comment.
The Ecology School’s green and sustainable building plan (The Living Building Challenge) for its proposed new campus on Simpson Road is important and admirable.
However, The Journal Tribune article failed to provide related context to this project or ask any questions.
In full transparency, I am a neighbor to this project and have gone on record many times in opposition to building a school campus via a special contract zone in a C-1 conservation area far removed from public water and city services.
The news article did not address the school’s financial capacity to raise the $12 million, nor what percentage of the cost is earmarked for the green design and non-toxic materials required by the LBC.
From day one, long-term vision plans for The Ecology School have remained veiled behind talking points and publicity that prioritize adjectives and emotions rather than hard numbers.
Per school press releases, 175,000 students have been served in on-site (Ferry Beach location) and off-site programming since 1998, but new goals for the River Bend campus include increasing student numbers by extending offerings and camps through the summer, something not possible at the Ferry Beach location.
The long-term impacts of thousands of students and a pattern of intense use can’t be ameliorated even by something as honorable as the Living Building Challenge.
More data: the contract zone agreement allows for simultaneous programming for 120 day and 120 residential students (with a 200-person cap on the property, except for transition periods), yet further permits 1,050 overnight weekly participants if they stay 15 days or less. This makes it possible for a new round of 1,050 students, chaperones, and on-site staff to overnight on the campus, as long as they stay 14 days or fewer.
This equates to 2,100 participants per month, or 18,900 annual students in the 9 months of programming the school has indicated will be its calendar for operations.
These numbers are in direct violation of the 1998 conservation easement that protected the historic 105-acre farm for 20 years, and symbolize the adulteration of original owner Mary D. Merrill’s vision for the conservation of her property. Ms. Merrill was clear in her intentions for the farm, and numerous news articles from the 1990s document her goal of keeping it undeveloped and dedicated to agricultural use only.
One of the standards of the Living Building Challenge revolves around a sense of “place” and “the creation of communities that are once again based on the pedestrian rather than the automobile,” as quoted in an article about the River Bend campus in the January 2019 Maine Home and Design magazine.
The proposed location of the school, 6.5 miles from downtown Saco and close to the Buxton border, makes it impossible for The Ecology School to even come close to meeting this standard.
While the school has submitted an “Innovative Traffic Management” plan per the demand of the Saco planning board, carpooling and bus-pooling goals for thousands of students over time by no means equate to a pedestrian-based philosophy or framework. Heavy traffic conditions on Route 112 and Route 5 make walking or bicycling to the campus with students highly improbable and difficult to implement.
I support innovative and sustainable approaches in building, land conservation, and energy-use, but the long-term effects of a $12 million campus built in a zone not intended for schools will reveal significant costs and liabilities, including to the fragile, rural ecosystem.
Inga Sandvoss Browne
Saco
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