Marina Schauffler; Matt Liebman, EPA; Chris Feurt, Wells Reserve; Brian Marcerelle,
MITA; Erin Love; Jonathan Labaree, GMRI; Rich Knox, MCHT; Jess Burton, SMCC; Mary Cerullo, FOCB;
Curtis Bohlen, CBEP; Theo Holtwijk, Town of Falmouth; Rebecca Schaffner, GPCOG; Alicia Heyburn,
HHLT, MITA; Alan Kuniholm, Portland Society of Architects; Matt Craig, CBEP.
This meeting has more overlapping questions and issues than other working groups. How do we engage with our communities (people, towns, constituencies)? How do we include more communities and organizations in the Partnership? CBEP human and natural communities as integrated and wants the next plan to reflect that.
CBEP is a coalition, a relationship-building entity: most of what gets done happens by partners. Its mission is to protect and restore the water quality and fish and wildlife habitat of the Casco Bay ecosystem, while ensuring compatible human uses. Original Casco Bay Plan goes back to 1996, and was revised in 2006. The document is supposed to be a plan for the community at large, with the efforts of partners fitting into a larger structure.
What’s planned this year is a thorough re-write, not a revision. This presents an important opportunity to re-evaluate our assumptions and priorities. Our collective understanding of Casco Bay has changed, and a lot is changing within and around the Bay – which the new 5-year plan needs to reflect. The actions will fall within the five-year timeframe but the vision is longer term.
Primary purpose today is to develop long-term goals related to community engagement. We will look into details of how we do that in coming months
There are multiple working groups for the plan re-write: Habitat, Water Quality, Living Organisms,
Science and Monitoring, Resilience & Climate Change, Partnership. There are lots of connections between these and the issues discussed. CBEP staff members are also conducting interviews with people who are harder to engage (e.g., politicians, experts, business people). The group of invitees for this meeting did include several representatives engaged in environmental education, but unfortunately none was able to attend.
How would the Casco Bay watershed look or function differently if communities were fully engaged with sustaining the Bay? What would things work or look different if we did this well? What are the gaps?

Portland’s combined sewer overflow project: it’s a big effort getting people to understand the value/importance. It’s critical to help individuals understand how choices on their own properties (e.g.,
Bayscaping) contribute to a bigger effort.
Need to look for ways to aggregate and amplify voices: perhaps some sort of toolkit with resources such as Harpswell’s community conservation guide and model ordinances. Create on-the-ground tools that volunteer groups can use to link their local efforts to the Bay and watershed (and help offer project funding?).
Increase capacity to accomplish goals by leveraging new partners with similar goals to work on the Bay’s behalf (e.g., overlapping priorities with some of the economic development districts or PACTS).
Bring people together around resilience planning for flood-prone areas (PSA is already doing some of this and may focus more attention on Commercial Street piers.)
Potential alliances with land trusts whose conservation efforts are increasingly focused on water… rivers, ponds, streams, watersheds. Use water as connector between geographically distinct areas.
There are around 14 active within the watershed. Encourage the shift toward community conservation—listening to community interests instead of talking. Ask about what matters to them and how to assist (service-oriented, rather than dictatorial), and link to economic values/development.
Plan must be focused so limited resources can be channeled effectively to specific community-driven issues (taking big goals in small bites). It should show history/accomplishments and the trajectory toward longer-term goals/progress. It should identify accessible pieces that other groups can easily adopt and incorporate into their activities (think about land trusts, conservation commissions, planning boards, neighborhood associations in waterfront communities)—the toolkit idea that arose previously.
Have some measurable goals that they can contribute to and report back on how everyone did. Consider choosing some models from outside the region, like Ogunquit’s anti-pesticide ordinance.
Participants discussed formalizing these measures in some sort of “municipal report card”—similar to what the Piscataqua Region Estuaries Partnership (PREP) has done with its environmental planning assessment ( http://prep.unh.edu/resources/pdf/piscataqua_region_environmental-prep-10.pdf
).
GPCOG did a similar assessment (online at http://www.gpcog.org/transportation-landuse/environmental-planning/casco-bay-environmental-planning-assessment/ ). It serves as a nonjudgmental way to inventory/assess their municipal environmental planning and practices and learn about the exemplary work of other communities. LakeSmart offers a model for rewarding accomplishments at different levels ( http://www.maine.gov/dep/water/lakes/lakesmart/ ). It should include the universe of possible actions that a town could take, and inspire the community to do what’s possible. (People are typically very interested in how their communities compares with neighboring ones.) It might be possible to draw on a report that Normandeau prepared in 2002 (Community
Strategies to Improve Casco Bay), citing possible actions that communities around Casco Bay could take.
It would be helpful to “package” this assessment in a way that makes it easy for elected officials to complete and to take follow-up actions to improve subsequent scores.
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Think in terms of Arnstein’s Ladder of Participation
( https://www.planning.org/pas/memo/2007/mar/pdf/JAPA35No4.pdf
) -- giving people different opportunities to engage initially and incentives to increase their participation. Recognize that some people won’t progress up the ladder far, but offer different options/choices. Use existing communication pathways (such as the e-newsletters of partners) to better advantage. Consider recognizing different levels of participation (bronze, silver, bold) to motivate groups and individuals.
Figure out ways to share/promote stories or videos that demonstrate the connections between people and place through portals such as particular Bay habitats (e.g., mudflats, islands). Use these to help people grasp the interlinkages between their actions and the health of the Bay. Map out groups of people and illustrate how they’re connected socially/physically—positive and negative sides of those interconnections. TNC did a marketing effort along these lines (Nature is Me) that helped people put themselves in place. How are their lawns linked with the mud/clammers? Pick 5 prisms or portals to tell the story in a simple way and show the connections. This will help make the work more relevant and build a broader constituency. This approach might also be very effective with legislators, decisionmakers.
Consider elevating the visibility of stormwater links (new water bills have some text around this— explaining the increase in fees). Other options: storm drain stenciling, signage at Back Cove, East End,
Mackworth. Jeff Tarling at the City of Portland is pulling people together to discuss educational signage on parts of the Portland waterfront. There are already good examples: use these as models.
The large group then broke into three smaller groups to discuss the following topics:

Linking with existing efforts. How do we make sure we are tying in with other things? What tools can we borrow and exchange? Networking.

Report/community indicators. What are best practices, who’s achieving them.

Portals that show connections and stories about place.
This group began with a discussion of what we’re trying to accomplish and what are the priorities—as that would dictate what is included in a toolkit. More background homework needs to happen: talking with the intended users (e.g., municipal staff and volunteer leaders) about what they need. There was discussion of having businesses participate in some sort of Bay pledge covering best practices (e.g., salt use, impervious cover) and maybe having a rewards system or competition (Long Creek offers an example here). Gather ideas from other National Estuary Program members around the country: a key role for CBEP is to find out what everyone else is not doing and fill the gaps. Train people to be local spokespeople for water quality in their neighborhoods—hosting “Ducky drinks” events – where people can learn from trusted friends and neighbors about how their home actions affect the Bay.
Creating a report card/self-assessment tool for watershed plans could get them thinking more about the connections between local policies/practices and impacts to water and the Bay.
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
Could include a list of indicators linked to improved water quality (and other State of the Bay indicators)—with a matrix to show which communities have taken what steps to protect water, habitat, etc. The goal would be to recognize those already taking action and provide an incentive for more towns to adopt those measures. Define the steps then describe the level of engagement.

Need to define what to measure: might be good to focus on structures (e.g., do they have a conservation commission) and specific provisions for comprehensive plans, ordinances, and setback (minimum vs. 250’). Links to State of Bay indicators need to have a clearly demonstrated impacts (e.g., conserved acreage, green infrastructure, drinking water source protection NOT red tide)

Determine whether it would be a checklist (yes/no responses) or a rating system (e.g., scale of 1 to 5) and how frequently the assessment/check-ins would happen. Discuss whether to have rating levels such as bronze, silver, gold. The report card should be linked to the “toolkit” so if they can’t check something off, they know how to go about creating that ordinance or policy.

This would CBEP in the position of showcasing examples of good practices.
Next steps –
1.
Determine if/how this would this be useful to the towns, how—whether they’d be receptive to participating in a scorecard.
2.
Find a subset of experts to define the scale and scope of the report card and what will be included. Talk to PREP, see how it worked for them.
3.
Consider including the report card as a component of CBEP’s State of the Bay report—helping illustrate the work being done at the municipal level. Break the SOTB report down town by town so people can see how their community is doing (see Manomet and PREP examples).
4.
Consider resilience as a focus or lens (e.g., flooding impacts). Could include a fish passage – barrier atlas (links to major state initiative, and to marsh migration. Include a metric for public access points/recreation.
5.
Engage people in fun events (river festivals, “we’re all in the same boat” cruises –that have food, music, engaging activities)—helping create positive associations with the Bay and watershed.
Try to build identity around subregions within the watershed—like the headwaters or islands, rather than the watershed as a whole.
The discussion began with the need to package stories and themes for the media—and begin building more of a base level of understanding (which could happen through many channels—including signage, storm drain stencils, and sharing more uniform topical talking points). Efforts might benefit from a widely used “tag line” that helps connect people to the Bay.
Retail businesses could help disseminate Bay-related information and stories: they have elevated the visibility of the Buy Local movement. Messaging should show how what people do can improve the
Bay—emphasizing connectedness. There’s a need to build relationships with businesses and bring them into the outreach effort.
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The group discussed how there are remarkable opportunities from middle school on up to graduate level –in Portland—to get students actively working on Bay-related projects. King Middle School uses expeditionary learning and has already done projects with invasive species and Sustainable Portland. At the high school level, there’s Casco Bay High School (which also does expeditionary learning) and the
Baxter Academy for Technology and Science. The USM Metropolitan University model presents new opportunities for project-based work, potentially in conjunction with local public schools. There are numerous other groups that would be interested in a story-telling projects around Bay identity (see www.cascobaystories.org
), such as SALT and the Telling Room.
A possible starting place might be to convene a discussion with representatives of the schools (and groups like GOMMEA) to discuss their needs and begin match-making with partners around the Bay who need tangible projects done. A current example involves Harpswell Heritage Land Trust working with charter school students, who are gathering stories/oral histories about place and sharing those. Land trusts and others could be more engaged in place-based learning opportunities outside of school.
This discussion will be summarized in online notes (with links sent to participants) and a draft plan will be out by the State of the Bay Conference in October. This group may reconvene in the spring to discuss more concrete actions, and participants are welcome to help move these ideas forward—as partners with CBEP. The CBEP board helps manage the program/operations, but there are numerous partners— like land trusts—that are engaged in project work.
Some recurrent themes from the morning’s discussion:
- Establish a network/toolkit to help municipalities share successes and resources (tool kit)
- Develop stories, or maps (portals) that help people see connections with specific places (mudflats
- Municipal environmental assessment (report card)
- Engage people in fun ways that involve learning while creating positive associations with place
(riverfront festivals, cruises)
- Think in terms of levels of engagement
What might it look like in five years if the community were engaged with the Bay?

Portland stormwater separation—boots on ground effort

Landowner choices—people participating in larger efforts like yard/bayscaping

People joining in the larger conversation—amplifying voices

Sharing of models like Harpswell’s “A Resident’s Conservation Guide to Casco Bay”
( http://www.harpswell.maine.gov/vertical/Sites/%7B3F690C92-5208-4D62-BAFB-
2559293F6CAE%7D/uploads/A_Residents_Conservation_Guide_to_Casco_Bay_Rev_1.3_120613
_-_on-line.pdf
)

Leveraging more partners (e.g., PACs, economic development districts) and linking more with the concern about jobs

Generating more of a conversation in Portland around coastal resiliency, sea-level rise

More PSAs, workshops
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
More land conservation projects are already connecting with water-based efforts

Bringing groups together to focus on watershed projects (need connections to funds and tools for on-ground work)

Mudflats: need to understand economic values

Something akin to the conservation community that is now listening more to communities—a more service-oriented attitude, asking what are the assets important to them?

Very clear priorities—need to narrow focus (particularly when everyone is so busy)
Can’t “shout” all the issues simultaneously—important to chunk issues within a 5-year timeframe (even though the vision should extend longer)
Build in interim goals to check progress against
Casco Bay is too big/amorphous—focus on elements (scenic, econ dev.)
Must be community-driven

Plan should be accessible and identify pieces that others can readily adapt—and make part of their work plans.

What partnerships need to be formed to support the key, identified issues?

Casco Bay is such a remarkable place—so interconnected physically, ecologically, socially. We need a better picture of this and of how individual impacts affect the Bay. We need help SEEING the interconnections.

Offer some sense of history/accomplishments/trajectory of actions—a “report card” of where
CBEP has come…

TNC had an effective “Nature is me” campaign with displays that was participatory—helped people put themselves in place. Maybe do some extension of Casco Bay stories—but focused on a single issue/habitat like mudflats. That could offer a prism-like view—seeing the Bay through different lenses.

There could be place-based stories/vignettes focused on different features/habitats (e.g., mudflats, islands, lawns) that would help people grasp the linkages between habitats and their cultural/economic ties as well as impacts

Those stories/videos could help with public and elected officials—helping prove the relevance of
Bay assets
Fostering Collaboration/Filling the Gaps

Engage the subset of 14 local land trusts around the Bay and their interests in relation to the
Bay

Engage neighborhood groups, particularly those near the waterfront

Expand on efforts (like Portland’s tax bills) that are seeking to help people understand storm water costs and the impact of household actions

Create packages for towns of easily replicable guides/activities—like storm sewer stencil kit, the
Harpswell resident’s guide

Could do more to educate residents about red tide, eutrophication

Expand Bay-related signage (like what is now in Bell Buoy Park on Commercial St.).
Opportunities at Back Cove, East End. The City’s Jeff Tarling is bringing together groups to discuss possibilities.

Share/disseminate sample ordinances like Ogunquit’s pesticide ban and plastic bag restrictions.
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
Arnstein Ladder of Participation ( http://www.vcn.bc.ca/citizenshandbook/arnsteinsladder.html
) –consider ways of increasing levels of engagement with various groups—creating options and choices for people to move up the ladder

Use graphics/web to identify and activate communication pathways

Consider having levels of recognition/acknowledgment or some sort of report card/set of indicators (like PREP and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation use)—to help towns assess how they re doing (e.g., in respect to regulating riparian buffers). Encourage towns to adopt more measures through social norms. There’s great potential with these lists, but how do we encourage towns to implement the measures? Follow up is needed, not just a report card.

The indicators on this report card could tie to the toolbox of sample measures/actions

Towns want very localized information

Normandeau identified what towns were doing and could do (but this information may be dated—from the early 2000s) and similar work was done by GPCOG two years ago (Casco Bay
Environmental Assessment)
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