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150 People Attend Conference on Smart Growth and Rail Service in N. H. and Maine

Release Date: 06/15/2000
Contact Information: Amy Miller, EPA Press Office (617-918-1042)

BOSTON - About 150 planners, citizens, business leaders and government officials today attended a conference in Saco, Maine, to address issues of smart growth in southern Maine and New Hampshire.

"Communities in southern Maine and New Hampshire are facing development pressures unlike any they have experienced since the founding of our nation more than two centuries ago," said Carl Dierker, regional counsel for EPA New England, at the first-of-its-kind conference in the region. "Careful planning and a committed citizenry can make a significant difference in the future of our towns and cities. Today's meeting begins the collective effort of protecting the historic and environmental character of our communities while helping them grow in smart ways."

"Momentum is definitely building for the notion that this country can prosper economically without sacrificing the environment and the quality of life," said Mary Lou Crane, regional director of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. "This administration is devoted to the notion that citizens, working with the public and private sector, can develop new ways to measure and enhance quality of life as we work towards creating healthier communities."

Crane and Dierker were the opening speakers for the conference co-sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Departments of Housing and Urban Development and Transportation. The meeting's focus on the two state area brought together planners, businesses and citizens facing similar challenges, among those a new rail service expected to start up in the next year between Boston and Portland, Maine.

"Too often growth and development of a community occurs without a well thought out plan, resulting in what is commonly referred to as sprawl," said Paul L. Lariviere, Division Administrator the Federal Highway Administration in Maine. "Today's forum provides a stimulus for energizing communities that will be receiving new passenger rail service to carefully plan for the attendant growth."

The conference offered specific tools for smart growth and included an overview of growth patterns in southern Maine and New Hampshire.

"Maine has worked for many years to revive passenger rail in Maine," said Evan Richert, Director of the Maine State Planning Office. "It's now up to us to make the most of it -- as another choice for transportation, and as a tool to help build good communities. We don't have to look far for some models to emulate -- it wasn't that long ago that a different kind of rail service, trolleys, spawned a generation of new, solid neighborhoods: the trolley suburbs that still are evident in many of Maine's older towns and highly sought after. We can make something very good of this opportunity."

The conference was held amid an unprecedented development boom in southern New Hampshire and Maine in the past two decades that has resulted in a host of new challenges and pressures. Among the sprawl-related facts:

New Hampshire, the fastest growing state in the Northeast, experienced a 55 percent increase in housing units between 1980 and 1998, with 7,000 new homes built in 1998 alone. Most of that growth was in the southeastern Seacoast communities.

In Maine, between 1970 and 1995, the public school population fell by 27,000 students, yet the state spent $727 million on new school construction, nearly half of it on new buildings in fast growing towns.

The conference included workshops on: Traffic Growth Trends; Growth Rates and Patterns in Coastal Maine and New Hampshire; Smart Growth Opportunities in the Rail Corridor; towns that will have rail stations -- Saco, Wells, Dover, Exeter, and tools for smart growth.