Ellsworth group hopes to position city as 'model green community' for next decade
Courtesy / GreenEllsworth.org
The Ellsworth Green Plan, soon to be released, is designed to guide sustainable development and improve and leverage natural resources, such as Harbor Park, seen here.
An Ellsworth group plans to release a draft of a “green plan” that could guide sustainable development and put the city on course to become a model green community.
The model green community might include protecting a working and accessible riverfront, conserving land and watersheds, making the city more walkable and bike friendly or offering more public transit options.
The 10-year Ellsworth Green Plan, which is being released by the Green Plan Steering Committee, is a citizen's initiative involving businesses, residents and organizations that can work with city officials to implement the plan.
The plan envisions an equitable community guided by sustainable, environmentally informed approaches to growth, according to information on the committee’s website.
The Ellsworth Garden Club launched the planning process in 2017. The club previously implemented “green plans” in the 1950s and 1980s. Both were focused on park space, Mary Blackstone, a member of the steering committee, told Mainebiz.
In recent years, the club conceived of the idea of doing another green plan, but realized the “green” concept evolved significantly to include ideas around renewable energy and sustainable development.
In 2017, the club, with municipal planners, held a public forum to get input from the community about what new green plan should do. The forum packed the municipal auditorium and included city staff, nonprofit representatives and experts in a range of areas. At the end of the forum, attendees agreed on a goal to make Ellsworth a model green community.
“In that public forum, we developed a mandate, a mission and a vision,” Blackstone said. “People carved out clearly what they thought the focus of the plan should be.”
The mandate is to “create a phased plan that will help Ellsworth become a sustainable, green community.”
The mission is to “provide Ellsworth with a phased and ongoing smart plan for creating and maintaining a functional, welcoming and thriving community ecosystem in which people-friendly green objectives are situated within and motivated by attention to the needs and benefits of the full biodiversity of our environment.”
A steering committee was formed and the garden club, in partnership with the steering committee, hosted over 20 public forums on topics ranging from sustainable development to food systems. Public input from the forums was used to inform the final Ellsworth Green Plan.
Vision statement
The plan envisions that, over the coming decade, the city should be:
• Doing a better job of monitoring its ground and surface water;
• Protecting a working and accessible riverfront;
• Conserving more healthy landscapes and watersheds;
• Placing a higher priority on quality maintenance of its trees, parks and cemeteries
• Offering more features of a walkable and bike-able community;
• Experiencing less traffic congestion and more public transit options;
• Reducing the amount of waste and recyclables it processes
• Deriving less of its energy needs from fossil fuels;
• Cultivating more viable local farms and food sources for all residents;
• Sustaining the qualities of rural living while enjoying a vibrant city center;
• Enjoying enhanced economic prosperity thanks to green businesses; and
• Striking a better balance between quality of life and commercial development.
Water, land, food, infrastructure
The plan is divided into four chapters: water, land, food and farmers and infrastructure.
“Virtually all of the chapters have a strong focus on business,” Blackstone said.
That focus is particularly strong in the food and farmers chapter, considered a hugely promising area for business development, she said.
“We’re beginning to see the huge potential of the food infrastructure through things like farmers markets — if we create a more positive environment for those business to develop,” she continued. “It’s about business and about equity, to make sure we create food systems that serve people who are not being well served by the overall food network at the moment.”
The land and water focus is “heavily oriented toward preserving our natural resources in such a way that we maintain the capacity and grow the capacity of recreation oriented businesses,” she said.
That includes consideration of the Union River, which runs through Ellsworth and has “potential to be a massively important recreation area,” she added.
She continued, “From an economic standpoint, our water and land are really important.” That’s particularly the case, she said, because visitors to Acadia National Park must go through Ellsworth. “The goal is to spread out some of that visitor interest. Currently people going through Ellsworth have no clue that Ellsworth is a predominantly rural and undeveloped community, with beautiful water and land resources for the public to enjoy.”
Building momentum
Throughout the planning process, the steering committee has engaged in small projects to build momentum. It has raised over $200,000 in grants to support planning and small projects. It has organized over 20 public forums and webinars for education and consultation plus other presentations, surveys and displays with input from 2,000 participants.
Perhaps more critically, it has developed working relationships and/or partnerships with Maine Community Foundation, Sewell Foundation, Quimby Foundation, Natural Resources Council of Maine, Sierra Club, A Climate to Thrive and Blue Hill Reversing Falls Sanctuary.
A community consultation draft of the plan is expected to be released on the website in October. Click here to learn more.
Webinar presentations and solicitation of community input will be held subsequently and the plan will be revised and finalized based on input.
It’s expected the final plan will be released in January, implementation will begin, and the Green Plan Steering Committee will transition to Green Ellsworth, an organization mandated to foster and support implementation of the plan.
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