|Nate Stone, GNG Little League President|
Things are going slowly, but well. Sargent has brought in a tremendous amount of material that will make the job much more viable. We’re waiting to hear from them (hopefully this week) as to how much remains to bring the site above the water line.
Our long-term issue will be generating donations or grant funding to offset the lost revenue because we’re likely no longer selling the location. Selling Bennett would have brought in about $190,000 that we were planning to use toward field construction. We have a number of leads there and are hoping to have some progress on those as we enter the new year. We may reach out to the community to ask for help, perhaps by raising funds to purchase the Intervale acreage from us to donate to RRCT or to hold as a community property. This is still an early idea, but it would be a win-win for the community to invest in purchasing that land for conservation while supporting the recovery of the spent pit at Bennett.
Our current plan is to make a decision on the final viability of Bennett at the end of January. We are hopeful that Bennett will be viable and I think it will be, but we’ll need to hear positive responses from some of our grant funders and, hopefully, hear of willingness from the community to support preserving the Intervale financially to make that possible.
Ellie Espling has helped us greatly by utilizing resources through her work at Susan Collins’ office to find opportunities for government funding and assistance. We are pursuing those currently and hope to have an idea shortly of the viability of those opportunities.
