NEW GLOUCESTER – Sarah Plummer gets down to earth stretching out her tape measure and recording by camera an eroded area where storm-water runoff could enter Sabbathday Lake.
She will devise a remediation plan for a private landowner and throughout the summer season for others who want to be partners to safeguard the lake’s health.
Plummer’s charge is to improve water quality in the Royal River watershed through erosion-control projects. She is an environmental educator with the Cumberland County Soil and Water Conservation District on loan this summer to the Royal River Conservation Trust to oversee a youth corps of workers.
The youths use hand tools to employ best management practices, for example, building drip-line trenches, infiltration steps, water bars, buffer plants and lake- and river-friendly walking trails.
As the project manager of the six-member team Royal River Youth Conservation Corps headed up by a crew chief, Plummer oversees the mission of teenage workers who perform the hands-on projects in the watershed this third summer for the program.
The third year of the Royal River Youth Conservation Corps is under the umbrella of the Royal River Conservation Trust, according to Executive Director Henry Nichols.
The Royal River Conservation Trust merged recently combining four local organizations: the Friends of the Royal River, the New Gloucester Preservation Trust, North Yarmouth Land Trust and Yarmouth Land Trust.
The Royal River Youth Conservation Corps is a partnership funded by contributing towns along the Royal River with landowner contributions, grants from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, the Cumberland County Soil and Water Conservation District and the Royal River Conservation Trust.
The 12-member town watershed of the Royal River begins at Notched Pond in Raymond, travels through a stream to enter Sabbathday Lake, then meanders 25 miles through Raymond, New Gloucester, Poland, Auburn, Gray, North Yarmouth, Pownal, Durham, Cumberland, Yarmouth, Freeport to empty into Casco Bay.
Sabbathday Lake summer resident Mary Cloutier, 19, says she began working with the first work crew, the Sabbathday Lake Youth Conservation Corps, when she was 15 and needed a work permit.
Now, a University of Southern Maine environmental planning and policy student, she is an advocate for the earth. This summer she is employed by the Lake’s Environmental Association conducting boat inspections for invasive plant species before they are launched into Sebago Lake and the Range Pond water bodies.
She credits her work experience doing hard labor for her passion in safeguarding the earth for the future.
Her mother, Joan Cloutier, says of her daughter’s conservation conviction, “I can’t throw anything recyclable away. She’s an advocate for the earth.”
Her father, Mike is the president of the Sabbathday Lake Association.
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