Visiting volunteers improve lakeshore
National agency sends team to help shield Woodbury Pond from erosion, invasive flora
Copyright © 2003 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
LITCHFIELD — Landon Morgan bent over a series of flat stones, carefully smoothing special soil-holding mulch around them to help slow the flow of rain water and filter it before it reaches Woodbury Pond.
Jessica Buchholz of Salem, Ore., stacks riprap rocks last week along the shore of Woodbury Pond in Litchfield. Buchholz was part of a team of National Civilian Community Corps volunteers who worked to protect the pond. click to enlarge
The St. Augustine Beach, Fla., resident is working in Maine as part of an 11-member team from the National Civilian Community Corps, part of AmeriCorps. They were brought here under a program sponsored by the Friends of the Cobbossee Watershed, a group which aims to educate people on ways to protect the watershed.
Morgan, 24, designed the flow-way to foil erosion on a point of property owned by Nelson Gamage.
"I had a little time, so I'm going to make it pretty," Morgan said. "This is going to divert and soak up a lot of runoff."
As Morgan worked under the tall pines, team member Jessica Buchholz of Salem, Ore., hefted rocks and boulders to be used to form riprap along the shoreline.
"These are the tossable ones," she said. Her gray shirt identified her as a volunteer, and her arms showed muscles strengthened by several weeks of hard labor.
The riprap prevents waves from tearing up the shore, and Geotextile material prevents soil runoff.
Gamage, who is vice president of the Tacoma Lakes Improvement Society, which covers Woodbury Pond, had bought 36 yards of white boulders, some of them weighing more than 150 pounds. While the AmeriCorps volunteers carted the smaller rocks in wheelbarrows, Gamage hauled the heavier ones in the bucket of a small John Deere loader.
He obtained a permit from the state Department of Environmental Protection to do the work around the water's edge.
The team provides the labor and the homeowner pays for materials, said Bob Moore, executive director of the Friends of the Cobbossee Watershed.
"This is a great, great thing that Bob Moore is doing," said Gamage, who added that 70 projects are on a waiting list for next year.
Drew Foley of Monmouth, a Unity College senior who works as an intern for the Friends of the Cobbossee Watershed, coordinates the projects. "I come out and talk to the landowner about the frontage and the problem spots," he said.
Foley is majoring in environmental analysis and policy.
The AmeriCorps team has worked on projects on an island owned by the Cobbossee Yacht Club and on property owned by Neal Glazier in Winthrop.
The team's goals are to support the Friends' projects: slowing the flow of runoff into lakes and ponds; helping staff the Otter, a pontoon boat that offers educational materials to homeowners on the waterways; and acting as "mil-foilers," courtesy boat inspectors who help prevent the spread of invasive milfoil plants.
The AmeriCorps volunteers arrived in Maine on July 8. It is their third project; previously they spent two months in Claymont, Del., tutoring fifth-graders and two months in Bridgeport, Conn., working for Habitat for Humanity.
The team members are lodged together, which proved a challenge for Moore.
So far they have stayed in the mission house at Camp Mechuwana in Winthrop, in several homes owned by Jay Snider and family on Ballards Bay on Cobbossee Lake in Monmouth, and at the state YMCA camp in East Winthrop.
"They want to fend for themselves," Moore said.
Just being in Maine is a treat, said team members who campaigned for the assignment.
"We're based out of Maryland," said Emily Fissel, team leader. This is her second year as a member of the corps. "It's such an amazing experience," she said.
She wore waders and stood knee-deep in Woodbury Pond as she and another team member muscled boulders up to the shoreline.
"I have a worker's complaint if I don't end up with some biceps," she said.
The work to slow runoff pollution on 300 or so feet of Gamage's shoreline took a full day, with Gamage ordering pizza to feed the team supper.
About 3 p.m., Ben Maki of St. Joseph, Mich., and Mike Siegel of Hollister, Calif., pushed the last of the huge boulders into the bucket of the loader.
"We love Maine," Maki said. "We're living on lakes."
For most meals, they pool their allowance of $4.50 a day and go to the grocery store. After four months together, they know who the good cooks are.
The members are 18 to 24 years old, and the 10-month program runs through the end of January. All are high school graduates, many have some college and others, such as Katie Liermann and Erin Mahoney, have college degrees.
Liermann and Mahoney graduated in May from the University of Wisconsin, lived two blocks apart on Madison Avenue in Madison, Wis., and never met until they were in Maryland.
"We got the best project ever," said Liermann. "We just wanted to be in Maine."
Fissel said their group is one of 18 teams in the Northeast.
While it's a lot of hard work, there is some play. The team has taken a music cruise out of Boothbay Harbor, toured some historic homes and seen a Sea Dogs game in Portland.
Gregory DeWitt, recently reappointed a commissioner of the Maine Commission on Community Service, which oversees all volunteer programs, stopped by the work site to thank the volunteers and to stump for continued funding for the national AmeriCorps program.
Betty Adams — 621-5631
badams@centralmaine.com