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$1 Million Bond Could Help Preserve Large Tract in Windham

July 01, 2009 - WINDHAM -- From his farmhouse on a hill off Swett Road, Larry Clark can study the imprint that time and progress have made on the town where he was born.

What was once an unbroken canopy of trees stretching toward the Pleasant River is now punctuated by cleared lots and the shingled roofs of Cape Cods and split-levels.

In this checkered sea, the Clark farm stands like an island – more than 550 acres of unspoiled fields and forests sprinkled with brooks, old stone walls and trails for hiking and skiing.

Windham residents will soon decide whether they want to keep it that way.

The Town Council is expected to schedule a public hearing in July on borrowing $1 million to help conserve the Clark property for farming, timber and recreation. The bond issue proposal would be subject to a local referendum in November.

Town funding would be a critical piece of a $2.7 million project that also includes state and private dollars and is aimed at protecting open space in a town that has seen steady development.

"It seems like 50 years from now, having a big parcel of fields and farms and woods in the middle of town might be a good thing," Clark said.

The Clark property, purchased by his father after World War II, climbs over a ridge east of Route 202, sweeps across Black Brook and extends more than a mile to the Pleasant River.

Clark, 68, and his wife, Ann, who have been married for 40 years, raised two children in the farmhouse, which was built around the turn of the 18th century. Larry Clark, now retired, worked at a local lumberyard and tended the land in his spare time, growing hay and selectively cutting timber.

Meanwhile, the town of Windham grew. Farms gave way to subdivisions, new roads sliced open old woodlots and Route 302 mushroomed into a booming commercial strip.

Property values rose with the demand for developable land, and even though they have put much of the land in state programs that reduce assessments on farms and woodlots, the Clarks' annual tax bill is $9,300.

About a decade ago, the couple began talking with the Windham Land Trust about protecting the farm. Because of the project's size and complexity, the local trust brought in the Trust for Public Land, a national nonprofit, and the Belfast-based Maine Farmland Trust.

Last year, the Land for Maine's Future program got involved too, approving a $518,000 award from the state program that preserves land for wildlife, open space and recreation.

Wolfe Tone, a staff member at the Maine office of the Trust for Public Land, said the broad support reflects the Clark farm's value as one of the largest remaining tracts of undeveloped land in Cumberland County.

"This is a conservation opportunity we're not going to get another run at," Tone said. "It's a chance for Windham to decide how it wants to look in the future."

Under a proposed plan for the project, about half the property would go to the Maine Farmland Trust, which would find a private landowner to farm it. Public access would be maintained for low-impact recreation, including hunting, hiking and snowmobiling, which the Clarks have always allowed.

"I always sort of felt it was too bad to lock land away and not let people use it," he said.

The Windham Land Trust would also get a piece of the Clark property along Black Brook, a critical piece of the trust's long-range goal to put a six-mile trail along the brook to the Pleasant River.

"I think most people understand the value of nature and the outdoors," said the Windham trust's president, Dennis Hawkes. "It's almost like going to the well and getting a fresh drink."

Tone said town support will be essential to getting the project done, as a demonstration of broad public support that will attract other contributions. He said conservation groups plan to raise about $275,000 privately, and the project is eligible for up to $750,000 from a federal farmland protection program.

Windham residents voted strongly in favor of state funding for the Land for Maine's Future program in a 2007 statewide vote on a $17 million bond issue.

Ann Clark said the local bond of $1 million would give residents a chance to do more conservation in their own backyard.

"We're hoping that they think this is their money in action," she said.

By DIETER BRADBURY, Staff Writer, Portland Press Herald, June 29, 2009


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