Casco Baykeeper Joe Payne leads off Land Trust’s Sensitive Shoreline Series

HARPSWELL— Joe Payne, the Friends of Casco Bay BAYKEEPER®, will lead off the series of Harpswell’s Sensitive Shoreline programs sponsored by the Harpswell Heritage Land Trust this winter and spring.  Payne’s talk, titled What Keeps Me Awake at Night, will be held on January 22, 2008 at 7 p.m. at the Trust’s Community Room at 153 Harpswell Neck Road.  He will lay the groundwork for the remaining programs of the series with an overview of the state of Casco Bay’s health and future.  Joe says, “We can’t be complacent just because Casco Bay looks good. Our citizens will have to make hard decisions in the near future about pipelines across the bay, sewage discharges, and the loss of aesthetic, recreational, and economic uses of our ocean resulting from current abuses.” 

The Harpswell’s Sensitive Shoreline series will focus on the health of Harpswell marine waters, the effects of water quality on shell fishing, and what we all can do to protect and improve its health and fisheries. Harpswell has the longest of any shoreline in Casco Bay, indeed in Maine, so our actions impact shoreline water quality in a big way.  Subsequent programs in the series will take place in February, March, April, and May with speakers from Maine’s Department of Marine Resources and again from Friends of Casco Bay.

Mary Ann Nahf, chair of the Trust’s Programs Committee, noted that “with the Trust’s new Community Room providing an assured venue, we can, for the first time, expand our educational mission with a series of themed programs that we hope will be of interest to Trust members and Harpswell citizens in general.  We are especially grateful to the Friends of Casco Bay and the Department of Marine Resources for making their experts available to us for our inaugural effort.”

The Trust’s Community Room is located at 153 Harpswell Neck Road, .5 miles south of the Brunswick/Harpswell town line and 1.7 miles north of the Mountain Road.