Dear Editor:

Elsewhere in this newspaper you will find an article submitted by the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens marketing director. Predictably, there is a little spin going on here.

Let me demonstrate this by using the information gathered and produced by their own environmental consultants and engineers.

Seven significant vernal pools have been identified in the development area. They are deemed significant when they are used by species of concern, threatened and endangered amphibians. A law protects these significant vernal pools and the area around them under the Natural Resources Act in a 250-foot radius. The botanical gardens proposes to fill portions of three of these pools and develop extensively within the 250-foot setback of these and several others to the tune of 330 thousand square feet. Additionally, there are 29 wetlands that will be partially filled. Does this sound like they are honoring their core value of “environmental stewardship?”

A parking lot complex designed for over one thousand cars is proposed to closely abut the property of Vaughn and Joanne Anthony. If approved, they will likely soon be listening to over 1,000 cars a day, being locked and unlocked, daily car alarms, back-up signals, leaf blowers, lawn mowers, front end loaders, street sweepers and so forth, as close as 40 yards from their house. And at night, a whole hillside of parking lot lights will shine in their windows, while during the day, glare off the 60-foot-tall glass building may be an additional nuisance. In a residential district, I might add. Does this sound like “sensitive to neighbors?”

CMBG has already asked the Boothbay residents to spend one million dollars for a roundabout so we can get even more people jammed onto Barters Island Road. Soon, I believe, they will want a sidewalk with water and sewer underneath to be run from the Center to the gardens. Additionally, the engineering work presented in the “Letter of Transmittal,” chapter 2, page 5, states the Gaecklein Road will “require widening to two lanes;” presently this is a narrow, hilly and winding 15 mph dirt road. All of this looks like an increase in our local taxes to me. Does that sound like they are being “sensitive to ... the larger community?”

But maybe I am looking at this all wrong. Perhaps I should embrace the extra traffic, extra noise, and extra drain on our peninsula’s limited resources.

Kevin Anthony

Boothbay