conservation

By Alice Waugh

There will be fewer crumpled paper cups in the Lincoln School’s future after one of the water bubblers is be replaced by a “hydration station,” thanks to a Town Meeting citizen’s petition by a group of eighth-graders.

Laura Appleby, Hannah Hwang, Keith Hylton, Roshan Kharbanda, Tara O’Malley, Simon Perry and Zach Tam wanted to come up with a more environmentally friendly solution for dispensing drinking water at the school. The bubblers have replaceable five-gallon jugs that dispense water into disposable paper cups, so each one has a wastebasket next to it filled with this trash.

After looking into alternatives, the students found that users could fill up their reusable water bottles at a “hydration station” that dispenses filtered tap water. Their citizens’ petition asked voters to approve an expenditure of up to $3,500 for a hydration station in Reed Gym.

In the course of their research, the students learned that the water in the Lincoln School is in fact safe to drink and is used by the cafeteria every day. The school has always had ceramic water fountains, but they were mothballed in the 1900s over concerns about excessive lead and copper. A 1991 federal law required towns to test and eventually limit the amounts of those metals in municipal drinking water.

To help the students, Lincoln Water Department Superintendent Greg Woods researched the Lincoln history of issue and learned that the metals had come from lead solder and the copper pipes conveying water from the mains to individual homes and schools. The problem was most noticeable in cases where water sat in the pipes for extended periods of time, such as the days and weeks when school was not in session.

“Unlike Flint, Michigan, the town and schools do not have lead pipes transporting the drinking water to the tap,” Woods wrote in a letter to the student group in February.

In 1998, the Water Department installed a new corrosion control system at both of the town’s water supply sources to make the pH of the water non-corrosive and to provide a protective coating on the interior of a building’s plumbing to prevent leaching. The town subsequently achieved compliance with the new rules—so well, in fact, that the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection granted a waiver to reduce the frequency of required sampling to once every three years.

Nonetheless, “we note that the success of the corrosion control systems to protect Lincoln residents from elevated lead and copper has not been widely publicized,” Woods wrote.

The hydration station will also save money. The students found that the school now spends $2,625 per year on water and paper cups for each bubbler, “so we’d break even in about a year and three months,” Perry said during their Town Meeting presentation. Other schools with hydration stations have been successful in increasing student use of reusable water bottles, O’Malley added.

Asked why the group didn’t press for hydration stations to replace every bubbler in the school rather than just the one in Reed Gym, Perry replied, “As a group, we want to take a step rather than conquering the world. We want it as a step to look at as inspiration.”

The Lincoln Squirrel will publish more stories about the March 19 Town Meting in coming days. Meanwhile, here are a few other warrant articles that were discussed.

Ballot questions

There will be two questions on the March 28 town election ballot that were also discussed at Town Meeting:

• A request for $320,000 for the Department of Public Works to buy a new street sweeper ($215,000) and an articulated loader ($105,000). The loader is a smaller vehicle used for plowing sidewalks and bike paths as well as trimming roadside vegetation.
• A request for a Proposition 2½ override to pay for Lincoln’s share of the new Minuteman High School. This question, which was placed on the ballot pending the town’s decision on whether to withdraw from the Minuteman school district, is now moot. Residents voted at a February 23 Special Town Meeting to withdraw. Though the town will still have a representative on the Minuteman School Committee until July 2017, it will not be liable as a member town for the new building’s capital costs.

Conservation Commission funding

A motion to allow the Conservation Commission to spend $25,000 on several land stewardship projects passed at Town Meeting, though not without some “nay” votes.

The money, which comes from fees paid to the town by people who leave conservation land for agricultural purposes, will go toward repairing the muster field colvert so it can safely hold a tractor and emergency vehicles, as well as the upper Browning Field bridge. Other projects covered by the appropriation are plantings to screen the solar panels in Far Meadow near Lincoln Woods, setting up six deer “exclosures” for studying how vegetation burned in last year’s fire near Sandy Pond; doing an inventory of invasive Japanese knotweed; and controlling phragmites that grow in wetlands, especially on the Sudbury River.

It was this last project that caused some controversy, as several residents objected to possible use of chemicals to kill the phragmites. Conservation Commission chair Peter von Mertens said the preferred method would be to cut the phragmites and then cover the area with light-proof cloth to prevent regrowth, but Conservation DIrector Thomas Gumbart acknowledged that herbicides are also an option.

Right-to-farm bylaw

The town passed over an article that considered amending the 2011 right-to-farm zoning by-law to add parties who are permitted to farm by right in Lincoln and to add agricultural uses permitted by right on parcels of less than five acres.

The Agricultural Commission (AgComm) hoped to propose the changes because more and more people are doing farming on a small scale, such as raising chickens in their backyards. The group drafted some amendments to the by-law but decided to get more community input on what sort of limits there should be, such as whether there should be a limit on agricultural uses or revenue for homeowners on properties under five acres.

“We want to craft it so it won’t alarm people and so we have the proper parameters put on operations,” AgComm member Ari Kurtz said the day after Town Meeting. The AgComm has a study group examine the current agricultural by-laws, and Kurtz invited anyone interested in joining the group to email agcom@lincolnton.org.

Currently there are 16 commercial farms in Lincoln on about 500 acres of land, he said. Lincoln farms raise fruits and vegetables and livestock including chickens, cows, sheep, alpacas, but also wine grapes, horses for riding and therapy, and bees for honey and wax.

The Green Energy Committee (GEC) and the town of Lincoln are sponsoring the Lincoln Energy Challenge, a new residential initiative to help reduce overall energy use and save money on energy costs. The ultimate goal is to decrease Lincoln’s residential energy use 10 percent by 2020.

Thanks to government incentives and advances in technology, many new energy-saving options have become available. Volunteers from the Green Energy Committee have examined these options, many in their own homes, and want to share this knowledge with other residents to:

• Reduce home energy consumption
• Increase use of “greener” sources of electricity, particularly solar and wind
• Consider rooftop solar panels or community solar options

As a first step, the GEC and the Town of Lincoln have selected Next Step Living (NSL), the largest provider of home energy assessments in New England, to coordinate outreach to our residents and offer free assessments. The committee conducted a competitive bidding process to select NSL to implement the program. The goal is for 300 Lincoln residents to complete a no-cost home energy assessment by April 2017 and to implement home improvement projects like air sealing, insulation, and furnace, boiler or appliance upgrades with the help of state-incentivized rebates. While many homes may have had energy assessments, residents are encouraged to get a revised assessment if more than two years have passed.

A home energy assessment takes just a few hours and includes on-the-spot improvements such as no-cost energy-efficient LED light bulbs and water-saving devices for faucets and shower heads. Each measure identified in an assessment reduces the amount of energy used in a home. If Lincoln residents implement the recommended measures, NSL estimates that the total savings will exceed $28,000 per year.

To schedule a free Home Energy Assessment, call 800-769-2864 or visit www.LincolnEnergyChallenge.com. For questions email Lincoln Green Energy Committee member Sue Klem at susan.m.klem@gmail.com.