Galen Koch: [00:00:00] I’m going to hold this. This is recording now. If that’s comfortable for you, whatever works for you.

Will Plumley: [00:00:09] I guess you got it at the right distance.

Galen Koch: [00:00:11] I got it at the right distance. First, I’ll just have you say your full name and just introduce yourself.

Will Plumley: [00:00:19] Sure. I’m William Sanders Plumley with no “u” in the Sanders, S-A-N-D-E-R-S. I’ve been working as a volunteer in the environmental sector since 1991.

Galen Koch: [00:00:37] Long time. That’s amazing.

Will Plumley: [00:00:40] Long time, yeah.

Galen Koch: [00:00:41] And where were you living, and are you still living in the same town as when you started with the Land Trust?

Will Plumley: [00:00:47] Yeah. My wife and I moved, bought a house in South Windham, Little Falls Village, right on the Presumpscot River in 1985, and we’re still there. I have not moved, and I’ve become more and more deeply involved with the Presumpscot River, the watershed, and everything to do with it over those years.

Galen Koch: [00:01:12] How did you first – well, which land trust were you first involved with, and how did you first hear about it? How did you get involved?

Will Plumley: [00:01:20] Well, the first NGO [non-governmental organization] I got involved with is Friends of the Presumpscot River, which I was a founding board member of. We got together in 1991 and incorporated as a 501(c)(3) in ’92. In ’93, I was elected president and served eight years – basically, the Clinton administration – as president of Friends of the Presumpscot River. During those eight years, we got to know, at that time, the Gorham Land Trust and Presumpscot River Watch, two other local NGOs with overlapping missions with ours. We would hold a joint Christmas party at the Windham-Gorham Rod and Gun Club every year. So, I got to know the Land Trust and became a member in the ’90s.

Galen Koch: [00:02:12] At that time, Gorham Land Trust was the one that you got involved with?

Will Plumley: [00:02:17] That’s right. Yeah, I believe they found it in 1988, but I wasn’t part of that, and I don’t know their creation story.

Galen Koch: [00:02:25] That’s okay. You don’t need to. So then you got involved with the Gorham Land Trust, and what was that experience like for you?

Will Plumley: [00:02:35] Well, initially, I was just a member and supporter and got to know the leadership, Mary Lee Dodge, Richard Curtis, and some of the other people. The first time I worked with the Land Trust was 2002-2003 time period. The Land Trust had fallen on hard times, and they enlisted me to facilitate strategic planning for them, which is something I’ve been doing for forty years for a lot of NGOs in the private sector and also the public sector. We got into a strategic planning process, and it was basically about four people huddled in a room, including two board members. The board was down to – I don’t know how many people were on the board – maybe three or four people. The treasurer, (Edie Welty?), who wasn’t even on the board, would be part of those meetings. It’s usually working with two or three people and didn’t take us too many meetings to conclude that it was premature to try to do a five-year strategic plan. What they really needed was a one-year tactical plan for survival. So, that’s what I delivered. I continued working with the Land Trust on implementing that over that first year, and also they had a project they needed help with, the McClellan House, which is part of this story, was the headquarters for the Land Trust for years when it was the Gorham Land Trust, when it was the Gorham Sebago Lake Regional Land Trust and then finally as Presumpscot Regional Land Trust. The Land Trust had a deal with the town of Gorham, who owned the historic building in a historic section of Gorham, and the Land Trust could use that whole building at no cost but had to maintain the building. There was an apartment upstairs. There was some business rental space on the other side of the first floor. So, it was outside of the mission of the Land Trust, but we were landlords. A problem arose that there was a lead problem in the building, lead paint, and we had tenants on the second floor, so this was a problem. The Land Trust enlisted me to raise the funds and manage the project, and we got that lead paint abated and got the whole exterior repainted, which was actually done in the heart of winter. The painters enveloped the whole building with scaffolding and plastic wrap and painted it over the winter of 2002-2003.

Galen Koch: [00:05:34] So, that was in use until PRLT moved here, basically?

Will Plumley: [00:05:41] That’s right. Then, after 2003, I was kind of back to being just a member and a supporter of the Land Trust until I got recruited onto the board in 2007. |

Galen Koch: [00:05:54] Can you walk me through some of the highlights of your time in leadership on the board?

Will Plumley: [00:06:01] Sure. I was on the board for about eight years and rotated out at the end of 2014. Certainly, a lot going on there; for most of those years, Richard Curtis was president. I’m process-oriented and enjoy facilitating meetings and things like that, and after sitting in on one or two board meetings in 2007, I talked with Richard. I said, “Richard, you’re president of Land Trust, and you put together the agenda, you run the meeting. But I don’t really hear you participating all that much in the meeting. How would you feel if we partnered up, and I could facilitate those meetings, and you could just fully participate?” He thought that was a good idea. We did that going forward from there. I think what I brought to the group was process, good meetings, good agendas, packets for the meetings, and process organization. We’d convene on time. We’d end on time. People could count on meetings being productive. I think that was honestly my biggest contribution to the Land Trust.

Galen Koch: [00:07:29] So, you came on as the co-president, it sounds like, or vice president?

Will Plumley: [00:07:33] I was vice president with the agreement that I would never become president because vice president in an NGO often is a path to the presidency. At that time, from 2007 to 2014, I was still on the board of Friends of the Presumpscot River and have been on the board now of that organization for 32 years. We don’t have term limits, and term limits don’t work very well in certain types of NGOs. From 2007 to 2014, I was on the board of the Land Trust, Friends of the Presumpscot River, and the Northern Forest Canoe Trail, and I chaired the Presumpscot River Watershed Coalition, which we founded in 2004 after a four-year planning process yielded a Presumpscot River management plan that needed to be implemented.

Galen Koch: [00:08:26] What motivated you to be involved with all these organizations? What’s the kind of driving force?

Will Plumley: [00:08:32] Well, the driver from the start has been the Presumpscot River. It didn’t take me too long after we formed Friends of the Presumpscot River to realize that the health, welfare, and recovery of the river, a key aspect of that is land use, especially abutting the river, but anywhere in the watershed. So, who are some of the good shepherds of land use? Land trusts. Any land that goes into trust and is protected forever is an asset to the Presumpscot River.

Galen Koch: [00:09:11] That’s amazing that you were involved with so many groups. It’s really pretty remarkable.

Will Plumley: [00:09:16] That’s what led me to the Northern Forest Canoe Trail, too, because a project that the Presumpscot Regional Land Trust wound up managing was the creation of the Sebago to the Sea Trail, which was actually a watershed coalition project that the coalition agreed to take on in 2008. Richard Curtis raised his hand and said – the Presumpscot Regional Land Trust was one of the member organizations of the Watershed Coalition. Richard said that the Land Trust would take the lead in the effort, so I forget why I’m telling this story now.

Galen Koch: [00:10:03] Well, I would love to know what it was like doing the Sebago to the Sea Trail. You were talking about the Presumpscot, river health, and the canoe organization.

Will Plumley: [00:10:16] Oh, yeah, the Northern Forest Canoe Trail. So, as part of the defining of this project, which the Watershed Coalition initially called the Trail Connectivity Project with the objective of creating a trail where you could dip a toe in Sebago Lake at one end, dip a toe in Casco Bay at the other end. This Trail Connectivity Project, as we’re talking about it at the coalition level, it’s like, well, what kind of trail is it? Minimum requirement there’s got to be designated use of walking the entire distance, but designated uses might vary. Does it have to be a land trail, or could we have a paddle trail or some mix of the two? I was already a member of the Northern Forest Canoe Trail because as soon as I heard of that organization a few years prior, it just fired my imagination. I wasn’t on the board yet, but I called the executive director [ED]. They used one of my quotes in an advertisement campaign when I told them how much I was jazzed by the organization and their work. I called the ED, and I said, “What would you think? The Northern Forest Canoe Trail comes right past the top of the Presumpscot watershed up in Bethel on the Androscoggin River. It wouldn’t be that tough of a portage to get from the Androscoggin watershed to the top of the Crooked River. What would you think of running a spur trail of the Northern Forest Canoe Trail down from Bethel down through Sebago Lake, the Presumpscot River to this big population center of Portland, which would really help your membership and support and all of that?” She laughed, and she said, “Well, it’s interesting we’re talking about that right now. Do we want to do spur trails? Do we want to stick with the original 740-mile trail?” So, we had a few conversations, and about three weeks later, she called and asked me to join the board. I joined at a time when they were just embarking on strategic planning. I was thrilled to serve eight years on the Northern Forest Canoe Trail Board as well.

Galen Koch: [00:12:26] So, you were then talking about the Sebago to the Sea Trail. It sounds like during your time, that was the big project that was happening.

Will Plumley: [00:12:39] It was. Here’s how the Land Trust was involved: Richard raised his hand and said, “We’ll lead the effort.” We had a manager at that time. We didn’t have an executive director yet, but we had a part-time manager named Tania Neuschafer, and she wound up being deeply involved in this, scheduling meetings, reaching out to other organizations, and coordinating this massive effort that was quite the collaboration. In addition to the organizations that were already part of the coalition, these other organizations, like Healthy Maine Partnerships and the Maine Bicycle Coalition, raised their hand and said, “We’re vitally interested in this trail project. Count us in.” We actually held a number of those meetings right here in this space when it was just a big room, and it wasn’t partitioned off or offices; it was just one big room here on the second floor of the Westbrook City Hall, and they volunteered the space for us to meet. Six years later, in 2014, we opened the twenty-eight-mile trail from Sebago Lake to Casco Bay with a celebration at East End Beach, where I got to speak.

Galen Koch: [00:13:55] That’s wonderful. It sounds like that was an opportunity to bring in a lot of different partners to encourage participation from different people. Was that an important part of the Land Trust’s growth?

Will Plumley: [00:14:15] I think so. It really formed a new relationship between the Presumpscot Regional Land Trust and Portland Trails because we were the two land trusts of record in the region that the Sebago to the Sea Trail was being built. So, we worked together hand in hand with Portland Trails, and it sorted things out because Westbrook was unrepresented by a land trust at the beginning of that. By the end of that, Portland Trails handled the trails from south of downtown Westbrook to the sea, and Presumpscot Regional Land Trust handled the trails, setting it up from the north side of Westbrook to Sebago Lake. So, that’s how both land trusts got officially involved with the city of Westbrook. Both land trusts have property in Westbrook today, and it’s kind of divvied up north and south of downtown.

Galen Koch: [00:15:16] That’s great.

Will Plumley: [00:15:17] So, that worked.

Galen Koch: [00:15:18] What were some of the other projects, either conservation projects or organizational projects, that you were involved with?

Will Plumley: [00:15:26] Well, I think the biggest project I was involved with of the Land Trust when I was on the board was the Randall Orchards. We’d been a small land trust. We had a number of properties; they were typically in the ten to twenty-acre size range, with some larger. But Dick Randall approached us with his apple orchards, Randall Orchards in Standish. He’s got eighty-six acres of orchard out there. He also had about three hundred acres of woodlands around the orchards. He wasn’t getting any younger. Dick’s no longer with us. This was very much on his mind, “What’s going to happen to the land when I’m gone?” He approached us and also Maine Farmland Trust, and we started working together – the Presumpscot Regional Land Trust, Maine Farmland Trust, and Dick Randall. The beginning of that process was so interesting because when this idea came to the board of directors, here’s an opportunity for us to really get involved in a massive conservation effort bigger than anything we’ve ever taken on. It was on the agenda for a July board meeting in 2010. We got the McClellan House. The board meetings would convene at, I think, 6:30, and we got to the McClellan House, and we got inside this old house, and it was stiflingly hot and just close and nice meeting room, but not tonight. We did something we’d never done before. We opened the side door of the McClellan House and took our chairs out onto the driveway. The board sat in a circle on the driveway, and we discussed. There was a motion made to take on this Randall project and work on it, and the motion was seconded. Then we discussed at length the pros and cons, and the concerns were many. The biggest concern was this is out of our league. We’ve never done anything like this. There’s time pressure. There’s a lot of money we’d need to raise. We have no track record of doing this. We’d need to make a huge commitment, and it doesn’t seem like a sure thing; it might be a big mistake. There was a lot of that vibe early in the meeting that – not sure this is the right project for us. Maybe Maine Farmland Trust can handle it; maybe they don’t need our help. Then, over time, the conversation turned. “Well, what’s our mission? Isn’t this why we’re here? Shouldn’t we be doing this? This is a huge opportunity. We’ve got to take a chance. We’ve just got to go for it.” Consensus was that it would take a leap of faith to vote to take this on. We took that leap of faith that night. That was a big deal, and it worked. It wasn’t easy. It was hard. I was not one of the most active people in implementing it, but we got it done. The Land Trust did it, and it took us into a new league. We’ve more than doubled our acreage of protected lands with that one massive project. To this day, we typically hold the annual meeting at Randall Orchards in Dick Randall’s old airplane hangar.

Galen Koch: [00:19:25] Wow, that’s amazing. You said there were lessons during that time, during that acquisition, that were learned. What were some of the things –? Do you remember certain things that happened that pushed the Land Trust into a new era of understanding about conservation or lessons in conservation?

Will Plumley: [00:19:51] Boy, I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on any one thing in particular, but it made us begin to entertain other significant actions like becoming an accredited land trust, which we were not at that time, and we would continue to be unaccredited for years to come. I know that the Randall Project and the repercussions of it were actually very helpful to us in becoming accredited. I had already left the board when that happened, and Rachelle managed that process, to my knowledge. I understand that the Randall Project helped cross the finish line for accreditation. In terms of other lessons learned, we learned we could do it. We learned that from 2002-2003, when I worked with a few people in a small, dark room to try to save that organization, to 2010, when we took it on and the culmination of the project a year or two later, we were on a firm footing. We had a solid board of directors. We had full commitments. There was no question that we’re moving forward as a land trust and could live our mission and achieve our vision.

Galen Koch: [00:21:23] Was there ever a moment for you where you were worried that that might not happen, that the land trust might not survive?

Will Plumley: [00:21:30] Well, I think that we got past the survival in those five years from 2002 to 2007 when I joined the board. When I joined the board, they had already rebuilt to a strong board, and I take no credit for that. I worked with them on creating a one-year plan to start to get back on their feet, and then when I joined the board, we had Richard Curtis as president. He’s a physicist and business owner in Westbrook and just an amazing guy. Phil Bartlett, who was a state senator at that time. We had Forrest Bell on the board, who runs an environmental group, FB Environmental. And a group of other good board members. We recruited additional board members like Matt Craig from the Casco Bay Estuary Partnership. Marylee Dodge was still there in 2007; she was one of the founders of the Land Trust and a staunch supporter. In those years between 2002 and 2007, I would run into Marylee once in a while, and she was still very concerned about the Land Trust and its process. She was a real pro, and during those difficult years, it bothered her to no end that the Land Trust was not reaching its full potential or even coming close. But by the time I joined the board in 2007, we had the foundations in place for that, and then we just kept going. Also, during my years there, the Institute for Civic Leadership helped us out. They had a program where they would match up young emerging leaders with board opportunities that were good fits. We got several good board members out of that, including Andy Colvin and Wells Lyons. Andy was a good friend of Rachelle’s, and when the ED position came open and the Land Trust decided to hire an ED, he was promoting Rachelle for the position, and I was piling on. I’d first met her when she worked at the Environmental Health Strategy center, I think it’s called. Then, she’d worked at making the Portland Food Co-op a reality. I was all for getting Rachelle in here. But before that, while I was still on the board, we took our first crack at hiring an ED, and we hired Stefan Jackson, who was a great guy, very committed and capable, and had accomplished a lot of things. We had to raise funds to do that. We raised enough funds to pay one year’s salary. This is pretty typical; you can get grants for launching an ED position but not for continuing the ED position. You’ve got to get that from donations and just general contributions and becoming a more fiscally sound land trust. Unfortunately, we only had Stefan for a year because it was a learning experience for the board. Between the board and Stefan, we just didn’t raise enough money to continue it in year two. I think that was a learning experience for the Land Trust. Within a year or two after that, I was off the board, just off the board, when the Land Trust decided to try again and hire a new ED, and that’s how we got Rachelle.

Galen Koch: [00:25:36] That has seemed like it’s been very positive for the organization, having Rachelle on board.

Will Plumley: [00:25:43] Totally, a hundred percent positive. I’m a big Rachelle fan. The Land Trust has thrived, and she’s just the epitome of competence and knows how to generate success. It’s hard to describe. She doesn’t please everybody, nor does she try, but she keeps the organization on track, and she’s pretty darn determined. We’re lucky to have her, and I know she’s going to be moving on. I’ve just met the new ED, Will Sedlack, and I’ll be reconvening that meeting with them after this recording is concluded. I did continue to play a role in the Land Trust after leaving the board in 2014. Rachelle asked me if I would – when she became ED, she set up a new committee structure and asked if I would serve on the marketing committee. That was my profession, which I retired from about a year ago. I served on the marketing committee with Rachelle and Andy Colvin and several others – Matt Streeter, who had gone on to be co-president these days. I served with them on the marketing committee for two or three years until [the] structure shifted a little bit. Then, the Land Trust created the advisory council and invited a lot of former board members and other stakeholders onto the advisory council. So, I’ve been on the advisory council ever since.

Galen Koch: [00:27:30] That’s great. Can you talk a little bit about the value of the work that the Land Trust does to the community that it serves? What’s the value of conserved land?

Will Plumley: [00:27:42] Sure. Well, first, there’s a big value that the Land Trust provides that we haven’t talked about yet, which is monitoring the water quality and the Presumpscot River. Since Rachelle joined as executive director, one of the big things that has happened is that the Land Trust has merged with or, more properly, I think, acquired the Windham Land Trust, the Presumpscot River Watch, which began monitoring water quality in the Presumpscot River in the late 1980s and was on hard times, needed help. The Presumpscot Regional Land Trust now includes the old Windham Land Trust, Presumpscot River Watch, the water quality monitoring organization, and Gorham Trails. That’s another detour story from early on. Before I really got involved with the Land Trust, one of the founders was a guy named Bob Frazier, and he was on the board in the early going. The story that I got was that Bob was frustrated by the amount of process and the slowness of progress. He just wanted to do land conservation specifically for the purpose of public trails, developing a set of public trails for the town of Gorham back when it was the Gorham Land Trust. So, my understanding is he left the board, and he founded Gorham Land Trust, and the web of trails throughout Gorham that he created, just from his own blood, sweat, and tears, is a legacy that will last forever to his hard work. He is not with us anymore. So, the Land Trust took over Gorham trails and the maintenance of those trails in addition to all the other properties. That’s a very important contribution. But your question, I think, was, what’s the value of the work. So water quality monitoring is a big value. When I wrote up a proposal to the state to reclassify the lower Presumpscot River water quality from class C to class B in 2020, I used the data that came from the Land Trust, ran all the math on it, and wrote the proposal to make a class B. That didn’t pass, but we got a moratorium through last year, a four-year moratorium on new point source discharges in the lower river so that we can work more with the Department of Environmental Protection to increase their comfort level with actually protecting the lower river, which they’re not doing very well right now because Class C is not the level of protection the lower river needs, and it deserves class B. That’s another story. Water quality monitoring is critical. The conservation of land helps the Presumpscot River. There’s tremendous community value to land conservation. When COVID struck – I live right on the Sebago to the Sea Trail in Little Falls Village, and the utilization of the trails and the public trails have been a big part of the Land Trust’s work. Land trusts these days prefer to protect lands that are going to be able to be open to the public and have trail systems through them. The huge East Windham Project is a big case in point with its own ten miles plus of trails going in and connectivity with other conserved acreages for two thousand acres total conserved lands with thirty miles of trails on them when it’s all said and done. There’s just tremendous value to that. I walk the trail next to my house almost every day, and it doesn’t take too long [to get] back into the woods on that trail where I can’t even hear cars anymore. You’re not walking on the sidewalk with cars and trucks going by and exhaust, so that’s just a tremendous asset. That’s why groups like Healthy Maine Partnerships wanted to get involved in trail creation. The public trail is a big thing. This is also water access. The Land Trust owns and maintains a lot of land along the Presumpscot River and other water bodies, notably Mill Brook, which is another whole story that we haven’t talked about today. Mill Brook is a key migration route for anadromous fish to reproduce. All these rivers in Maine that have been dammed for centuries or decades, those dams blocked those fish migrations. How do you expect a species to survive if it can’t procreate? A lot has been done to turn that around in the state. There’s a big controversy on the Kennebec River right now, and Atlantic salmon – there’s still Atlantic salmon trying to come up to Presumpscot River. We’ve got enough fish passage on the Presumpscot River to sustain part of the population that the river could sustain if it were fully opened up. There’s value to people. There’s value to the ecological communities so that these ecosystems can be reconnected and thrive once again. I guess those are the two biggest values.

Galen Koch: [00:33:52] Yeah, I love that. A lot of people have mentioned, too, just the connections between the waterway and land conservation, and it’s especially important. Obviously, this land trust is named after a river basically.

Will Plumley: [00:34:08] That happened while I was on the board.

Galen Koch: [00:34:14] Was that an intentional decision?

Will Plumley: [00:34:16] It was. It was originally the Gorham Land Trust. My understanding, and this precedes my board membership, it became the Gorham-Sebago Lake Regional Land Trust when one of the board members, Joanne Chessey, wanted to donate a large acreage around a beautiful body of water in the town of Sebago. This was the Gorham Land Trust, and so the Land Trust took that land on. She was a willing donor, and it wasn’t that hard for them to do at that time and didn’t need much stewardship. It was their biggest property until the Randall Project came along. Suddenly, the Gorham Land Trust had their biggest property in the town of Sebago; that’s when they changed its name to the Gorham-Sebago Lake Regional Land Trust. I worked in marketing, and I got on the board, and Forest Bell and I had the conversation that that’s a really cumbersome name. We were both working on the Presumpscot River as well, so I think we led the effort. I don’t remember exactly, but I think we led the effort to change the name to Presumpscot Regional Land Trust.

Galen Koch: [00:35:43] It’s got a good ring to it. PRLT.

Will Plumley: [00:35:46] It does. The only real controversy about it, I think, is the word regional, and the idea there is that at the time – this was about fifteen years ago, maybe. At the time, the state and foundations, foundations in particular – land trusts had just sprung up all over the country. This is a recent effort. Fifty years ago, there were almost no land trusts, if any land trusts; it was just an idea. Then, today, there’s somewhere close to a hundred land trusts in the state of Maine alone. Funders were concerned that every little town has a land trust, it seems, and it’s very difficult and shouldn’t there be a more coordinated effort. So, being a regional land trust had cachet for funders. If you’re a regional land trust, you had a bigger picture; you had a bigger mission. You weren’t just a one-town land trust. The word regional, I think, helped us get funding as well.

Galen Koch: [00:36:53] It also sends a message about the borders of things not matching the environment’s borders.

Will Plumley: [00:37:05] Yes. Yeah, right. Because political boundaries are not ecological boundaries. Presumpscot Regional Land Trust is sort of vague. Well, what does that mean? What is your service area? We spell that out in our strategic plan, and you can see what our service area is, but there’s also gray areas. Our service area abuts areas that don’t have land trust support. What can we do there? What should we do there? Things can change over time, but it is certainly Presumpscot-centric.

Galen Koch: [00:37:49] You may have already said this. Do you have a proudest moment or proudest contribution from your leadership on the Land Trust?

Will Plumley: [00:37:58] Well, I think, actually my proudest moments and contributions have been around two things. One is process for progress. When I was with the board of directors and had the honor of facilitating all the board meetings for eight years and working with Richard between meetings, Richard and Tania or Stefan, to set agendas, put together packets, structure meetings, and then facilitate meetings and document and have assignments and to do’s coming out of them. That’s one. The other is, just on a larger scale, as chair of the Presumpscot River Watershed Coalition, one of the biggest projects we did involved the Land Trust because it was that Sebago to the Sea Trail. Another one was establishing vision, values, and priorities for land conservation throughout the Presumpscot watershed, which was a multi-year effort with a ton of stakeholders. You might have seen the document out on Rachelle’s table when you stopped in a few minutes ago; that was the product of it. We identified and agreed across a variety of townships and cities where the highest priorities for land conservation are and why.

Galen Koch: [00:39:43] When you say where, is that specific pieces of land or in a more general sense?

Will Plumley: [00:39:51] Like political boundaries, land boundaries are also not ecosystem-based necessarily. So, it’s not pointing out specific parcels. It’s pointing out specific regions. The headwaters of certain streams that still have trout populations, for instance. Those headwaters should be protected as much as we can because otherwise, we’ll lose those trout populations and those wilder areas here in the greater Portland region that are still viable.

Galen Koch: [00:40:33] When did you work on that collaborative effort?

Will Plumley: [00:40:36] That collaborative effort would have happened somewhere between 2010 and 2014.

Galen Koch: [00:40:43] What do you feel the outcome of that has been? Have you seen it in action?

Will Plumley: [00:40:53] Yes, it also set up a co-support system among land trusts throughout the region and also gave them a document to point to when they’ve got a land conservation project that actually is a good fit for this vision, values, and priorities document. They can reference that when they seek funding and try to make their project work. I think it’s got a lot of power from that standpoint. Actually, this other big project, the Land Trust wasn’t involved in, but the coalition was able to get named a targeted watershed by the US EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] in 2007 – I think it was. We got a $740,000 grant to mitigate cumulative impacts to the water quality of the Presumpscot River, and that work was done by five member organizations. I don’t think the Land Trust was one of them. I’m not positive.

Galen Koch: [00:42:02] It’s great. A lot of coalitions and collaborations happening that are all in service of one another.

Will Plumley: [00:42:09] I think that’s what I’m proudest of, is helping to build these networks and these connections and not only have the Land Trust that I facilitate at the meetings work together as a team better but then have the organizations, all the stakeholder organizations with overlapping missions in my beloved Presumpscot watershed, which is the river to which I belong as Chief Polin put it when he walked to Boston all these years ago. [Editor’s Note: Chief Polin was a prominent leader of the Abenaki tribe in Maine during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Chief Polin played a significant role in advocating for the rights and interests of the Abenaki people, particularly in regard to land rights and recognition of tribal sovereignty.] Friends of the Presumpscot River picked up the Wabanaki mission of conserving and protecting the Presumpscot River because it was the loss of the health of the Presumpscot River that led to the attempted genocide and the extirpation of Abenaki peoples from this region. When the dams were put up on the Presumpscot, the salmon couldn’t get through, and people got hungry.

Galen Koch: [00:43:19] It’s almost trying to go back in time [to] right a wrong or something.

Will Plumley: [00:43:24] Yeah. There’s a big social justice aspect to the work the Friends of the Presumpscot River does on the Presumpscot River, and I think the land conservation is partially an extension of that, as well. I think there’s a little bit of a social justice aspect to the Land Trust’s work but a huge social justice aspect to the Friends of the Presumpscot River’s work.

Galen Koch: [00:43:57] Do you have any stories –? You’ve mentioned some things that we didn’t hit on, but any stories that are important to understanding the history or your contributions that we haven’t talked about?

Will Plumley: [00:44:11] I think I left my cheat sheet in the other room.

Galen Koch: [00:44:13] I have something. Let me see. I have the bio that you wrote us.

Will Plumley: [00:44:20] Can we pause for a second?

Galen Koch: [00:44:21] Yes, let’s pause. [RECORDING PAUSED] I think the bio looks pretty – we’ve pretty much covered it.

Will Plumley: [00:44:32] I think this is in the bio. I had mentioned that in 2002, my services were enlisted by the Land Trust to create a strategic plan, but that turned into a one-year tactical plan to help the organization begin to rebuild and strengthen itself. When I joined the board, it was soon time to actually write a strategic plan. So, I was involved. We enlisted an outside facilitator, and I worked hand in hand with her on process design and structure of the strategic planning process. We went through the process in a series of special meetings with primarily the board of directors but some other people as well. Then, I drafted the strategic plan; I already had a structure that I used for NGOs and land trusts in particular. I’ve worked with a ton of land trusts on strategic planning. After the sessions, I drafted a strategic plan and took it to the board. We went through a few iterations of it and modified it until it was just right. It had the right mission and vision, values, objectives, and strategies in it. We had a five-year strategic plan, and we were off to the races. That ended at about the time I left the board of directors. When Rachelle became ED, that was one of the first major projects she picked up; she realized it was time to do strategic planning again, and the Land Trust hired me to facilitate. After leaving the board, I got to facilitate strategic planning with the new board [and] the new ED, and it was great. I enjoyed the heck out of it. It jazzes me to help groups succeed. When I was a kid, I loved team sports. I like individual sports, but I’d rather be part of a team, frankly. It always bothered me when I got in the world of business that people hated meetings and thought they were a joke or – maybe that’s too strong a language, but [inaudible] we’re going to have another meeting. That’s a waste of time. I saw in the business sector – a lot of people felt that way about strategic plans as well. There was a Dilbert cartoon one year where the strategic plan was referred to as the big honking binder that just sits on the shelf gathering dust. When I’m involved in strategic planning, I call it strategic planning and implementation because I think the biggest shortfall of organizations that don’t benefit from their strategic plan is that they don’t pay attention to it. It does become something that’s in the background, not referenced, and so it just kind of dies. I was thrilled to be able to facilitate strategic planning after rotating off the board. It’s such a pleasure to me to be able to facilitate a group and not be the participant in the group but the facilitator. It’s freeing in a way, and it forces you to be fully objective even if you have knowledge and opinions in that space. You’ve just got to set that stuff on the shelf. You can reference your knowledge to help with the discussion, but your opinions, unless the group wants you to share your opinions – and that sometimes happens – I find it very freeing to be put in a situation where I have to do that, where I have to just focus on the task at hand and set my own self and my preferences, and my ideas just put those aside, and it’s somehow very freeing. I really enjoy that.

Galen Koch: [00:49:03] Yeah, that’s great. I’m glad Rachelle picked up because you have that continuity of all three of those – the tactical and two strategic plans.

Will Plumley: [00:49:11] Right. I guess that’s a big contribution I’ve made is to help with the trajectory of the organization over a long period of years.

Galen Koch: [00:49:27] That’s great. Is there anything else you want to share or final thoughts that you have in our final minutes?

Will Plumley: [00:49:39] This may be off-topic, but I will say that we have a land use problem in our watershed. We have more than one land use problem in our watershed. Our impervious surfaces are above more than eight percent of the land in the watershed. That’s a problem. Eight percent is determined to be a tipping point for water quality. The bigger problem in my mind is zoning. The Clean Water Act went through in 1972, and most of the zoning in this region was created in the 1970s sometime. Even though the Clean Water Act was in place, I don’t think towns referenced that or thought about it much when they set up their zoning. There’s a whole lot of land abutting the river all up and down it that’s zoned for industry. The reason for that is that there used to be a rail line that paralleled the river that could deliver goods and ship goods for industries, and the river was still seen as a convenient place to dump your waste. Well, that’s changed. The L&N don’t stop here anymore. That rail line is closed and has been closed for decades. It’s not coming back, even though some people think it should. It’s just not going to happen. The river is no longer a convenient dumping place for waste. You can clean up your waste. You can get a permit. You can discharge it into the river if you meet all the criteria. But to have this hangover of industrially zoned land on the Presumpscot River is dangerous and bad for the region. It’s going to take a concerted effort, not just one organization, to change that, and I don’t know how to do it, and that keeps me awake at night.

Galen Koch: [00:51:49] That’s the next motivating factor for you.

Will Plumley: [00:51:52] One of them. There’s plenty of fronts for action.

Galen Koch: [00:51:58] That’s great. I like ending on a call to action. Thank you so much, Will.

Will Plumley: [00:52:06] Thank you, Galen. This has been a pleasure.

Galen Koch: [00:52:08] Great. Yes, for me, too.