South Portland is home to some of the most stunning scenes of natural beauty in Maine. From Bug Light to the grassy banks of the Fore River, we’re blessed with an abundance of biodiversity: beaches, estuaries, fields, and forest — all rolled neatly into 13 square-miles of paradise. Our Parks and Recreation department maintains more than 500 acres of park land, a municipal beach, and more than eight miles of trails, constituting a “Greenbelt” that links parks, neighborhoods, business districts, and Portland, Scarborough and Cape Elizabeth.

That’s a lot of open space and wildlife to manage. And manage we must. We all own a stake in the open spaces of South Portland, and we share responsibility in the maintenance and stewardship of these valuable resources. Therefore, we all have an equal say in the use of our shared spaces: the activities we choose to perform there; the way we choose to allocate our limited financial resources to support those activities. Open spaces, then, are very much a public policy issue and we need to find innovative solutions to manage them responsibly — and responsively.

South Portlanders overwhelmingly support responsible stewardship of our environment. Civic groups routinely volunteer time and money to clean our parks and monitor public behavior in them. City Councilors, in turn, owe it to the people of South Portland to foster and support those conservation efforts. Did you know, for instance, that the state’s Healthy Beaches initiative is seeking volunteers in South Portland to test and monitor the waters in our streams and beaches? In 2004, South Portland dumped 20 million gallons of rain water and raw sewage from outdated sewer lines, and that overflow probably spawned the bacterial blooms that closed Willard Beach in the spring of 2005. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we entrusted our schools with the task of monitoring our water? Our kids could learn about life sciences in their own community. They’d also be taking responsibility for public health and the environment they love. Who knows how many budding scientists are sitting in our classrooms today, just waiting for the chance to get out and discover their world.