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Monday May 19, 2014 marks ten years since ground was broken for construction of the Scarborough Marsh section of the Eastern Trail. The project was managed under the direction of the 12-town Eastern Trail Management District in partnership with many organizations including the Town of Scarborough. That section has generated amazing public support for the Eastern Trail.

Could anyone with their groundbreaking shovels in hand have imagined what would be accomplished in the following ten years?

Congratulations and many thanks to the hundreds, and thousands who believed in and supported the Eastern Trail vision and have worked so hard to continue building the first 21 miles of our off-road trail. Since that historic day, we have truly demonstrated that “if you build it, they will come.”

Several Eastern Trail leaders, and visionaries, who led the efforts to get this project designed, funded, and off the ground, gathered on the Scarborough Marsh bridge on May 19 to mark the 10th anniversary (all photos by Jim Bucar):

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[Note: This article appeared in the Spring 2014 Newsletter. The full newsletter can be viewed in this pdf document]

By Marianne Goodine, Treasurer, ETMD

As we spring ahead and look forward to warmer weather, the Town of Wells is working together with the Town of Kennebunk to continue the trail southward through Wells to the North Berwick Town Line. Wells is currently putting the finishing touches on its Fiscal 2015 budget and will present to the Wells voters at the Annual Town Meeting on June 10 a funding article to “Undertake with the Town of Kennebunk preliminary design of the Eastern Trail through Wells and Kennebunk along the Granite State Gas Pipeline Transmission corridor.”

This request for $30,000 will enable Wells to join the Town of Kennebunk in this first stage— completing an engineering design— of ultimately constructing 7 miles of trail through Wells.  To reduce the cost to citizens of Wells, most of the work will be done in-house by the Town Engineer/Planner.  If you are a Wells resident I ask that you come to the polls on June 10 and vote in favor of this article to continue the trail southward through Wells and reap the benefits of this unique asset.

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[Note: This article appeared in the Spring 2014 Newsletter. The full newsletter can be viewed in this pdf document]

By Brenda Edmands

The ET provides a space for recreation, transportation and socialization for all users. And sometimes it provides a lift when your life has hit some rough patches.

When Joe Yuhas’ wife Delpha was going through some intense stages of her illness, she and others urged Joe, her primary caregiver, to take a break each day. Her doctor’s office was on Route 1, near Scarborough Marsh. So, as Joe explains, “I would throw my bike in my truck, go to the doctor’s to pick up her prescriptions, then ride the trail for an hour or so,”

The exercise, the beauty of nature and the change always helped him find a path back to at least a small sense of balance. Shortly after his wife’s death, the dedication of the KAB section of the ET close to his home only reinforced the positive feelings he had about the trail.

It has seemed only natural, then, over the past three and half years for Joe to volunteer more and more frequently for the ETA.

He had already been volunteering for “small tasks here and there” for some time after meeting John Andrews in the parking lot of Saco’s Dyer Library. As Joe puts it, “Next thing I knew I was stuffing envelopes.” (This is a frequent experience of those who meet JA.) He’s still helping with mailings, but he’s now also serving as a trustee and trail ambassador, and as a Sag wagon driver for the Maine Lighthouse Ride. He also staffs information booths at such events as school health and wellness fairs, attends community meetings, and gives talks to groups about the trail. Whew!

A former head of the life sciences department at St. Francis in Biddeford (later UNE) and biology teacher at Kennebunk High School, where he started their oceanography program, Joe is really in his element when sharing his knowledge about the natural life along the trail. This is readily apparent when he is leading one of the ETA’s increasingly popular full-moon walks/snowshoes/skis. He says the walks “take me back to my graduate school days when I worked as a naturalist for the Columbus, OH, Metropolitan Parks.” He also enjoys how the walks are making him brush up some dusty corners of knowledge about birds and plants.

He doesn’t know if it’s because of his experiences with the ET or not, but recently he began teaching indoors again, too, leading a course in Natural History at York County Senior College.

His favorite natural encounters so far on the ET are baby snapping turtles crossing in front of him and the one beaver he spotted near the site of last year’s trail flooding. “It was around 40 pounds,” he said. While he acknowledges it probably helped to build the dam that caused the trail damage, from his description you can’t help feeling that he might be rooting, just slightly, for the beaver.

Joe enjoys the people he gets to meet as well.This winter he led a moonlight walk with a large group on snowshoes, including many Boy Scouts and their troop leaders.He’s also been impressed by users he’s encountered in warmer times, like the woman from Nova Scotia who was riding the East Coast Greenway (which ET is a part of) all the way from Halifax to Cape Cod, her bike fully loaded with gear. He also finds it somehow reassuring to see his own cardiologist regularly riding the trail.

He wouldn’t say he “necessarily looks forward to having to rescue people” as a Sag wagon driver during the annual MLR, but he admits, “I do find it gratifying” to assist those in need. And though he worries that it sounds “cheesy,” he says what he really likes best about helping at the ride is  “cheering the riders in as they come across the finish line.”

Have we mentioned how very, very lucky wefeel to have Joe volunteering for us?

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[Note: This article appeared in the Spring 2014 Newsletter. The full newsletter can be viewed in this pdf document]

by John Andrews

Who uses the ET? Where do users come from? What does the average visitor spend on ice cream? Boots? Bicycles? Lodging? Beyond a little casual knowledge— I’ve met cyclists on the ET who came from Vermont, New York and Quebec just to bike the ET— we have no measured data. We intuit that these users must benefit local economies, but we haven’t yet quantified those benefits. How can we measure them? What have others done?

Carl Knoch, Northeast Trails Development Manager for the Rails to Trails Conservancy (RTC), wanted to answer these questions for a Pennsylvania trail. He electronically counted users and asked hundreds of Pennsylvania trail users to answer self-mailing questionnaires. With the results, he began to measure the trail’s economic impact, learning how many people

used the these trails, where they came from, and what they spent RTC has subsequently applied Carl’s methodology to dozens of trails and published the results, all the while evolving a better, more refined methodology.

This season, thanks to a generous grant from Kennebunk Savings Bank, ETA will be applying Carl’s methods to measure the economic impact on the local communities of the off-road sections of the ET from Kennebunk to Scarborough. The process has already begun: Canadian-made infrared electronic counters are being tested; and self-mailing surveys are being printed. ETA plans to publish its economic impact study at the end of 2014. And you can meet Carl Knoch, who will be the feature speaker at ETA’s annual meeting on May 15.
(See a related article here.)

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[Note: This article appeared in the Spring 2014 Newsletter. The full newsletter can be viewed in this pdf document]

By John Andrews

Do any of you remember the old waste water pipe bridge over the Dunstan River that meanders through the marsh? I’m sure you remember its replacement, the Eastern Trail Bridge that carries trail traffic while supporting both that pipe and the Granite State Gas Pipeline. I doesn’t seem possible, but ten years have already passed since the May 19, 2004 groundbreaking ceremony took place a few weeks after the accompanying photo was taken.

We’ve made unbelievable progress since 2004, enough to prove the “Lenny Ruthazer Principle,” named after a wise engineering manager from my past life. Lenny asserted that “You will always overestimate what you can accomplish in a year and very much under estimate what you can accomplish in ten.”

Lenny, I wish you could know how right you were! As we of the ETA consider the future of the Eastern Trail, we will do well to keep hearing his words.

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[Note: This article appeared in the Spring 2014 Newsletter. The full newsletter can be viewed in this pdf document]

By Joe Yuhas

Prior to and on October 13, 2013 (a Friday!) heavy rains covered over half a mile of the Biddeford section of the Eastern Trail with impassable flood waters. Reluctantly, we closed the trail, an unprecedented action. The ET website and ET Facebook page immediately relayed to trail users that we had informed Unitil and Biddeford’s department of public works and city manager that the section of the trail would be closed until further notice.

As a further complication, an event had been scheduled on that section of the trail for the following day. As you might imagine there was concern about how long the trail would be closed. But even more perplexing, was the question of how and why the flooding occurred. The trail had been open for over three years and had not flooded after many periods of prolonged heavy rains. What had changed?

The answer was Castor canadensi, i.e.,beaver, that industrious engineering rodent, the only other mammal besides humans that commonly alters its habitat to make it more suitable. Looking back, earlier in the summer many users of the Biddeford section of the Eastern Trail had noticed beaver activity in the vicinity of the 23¼ mile marker. That area, not far from the Arundel line, is marked by a culvert which passes beneath the trail with a broad open area along the trail. The wetland area there attracts many waterfowl and wading birds; with close observation, minnows can be seen feeding beneath the surface of the water. And a beaver family had evidently taken up residence.

I remember noticing the increasing number of branches and small trees being added to the edges of the impounded water on the opposite side of the trail early in the summer. Although I had not seen the beavers working, it became clear that they were busily constructing a dam. As the summer progressed, I noticed how the water level was rising and the noise of rushing water became more pronounced over the weeks as the height of the beaver dam rose. All very picturesque and appealing, but….

It is not unusual to see the results of the beavers’ work without seeing the beavers themselves, since they generally avoid humans and are nocturnal in their habits. Clearly, as the work progressed the water level on the upstream side of the trail inched its way upward. Apparently the beavers had also blocked the culvert, compounding the problem. By the first week of September the water level had risen nearly four feet and spread over an extended number of acres. The heavy rains did the rest: the force of all the impounded water washed out a large section of the trail.

Fortunately, the story does have a happy ending. First of all the scheduled event — the NF Walk — was relocated to the Thornton Academy section of the trail with little problem. Then Biddeford public works and Unitil responded immediately; in five days, including work over the weekend, the trail was again passable. The two agencies hauled in rock and rebuilt the trail over an extended length. The beaver dam was breached and the culvert cleared. And what about the busy beavers?

The whole family was gently trapped and relocated to a friendlier home.

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