HALLOWELL — Rosemary Presnar is an avid environmentalist who has lived around the country, taking an appreciation of the outdoors with her from Delaware to Chicago to Rhode Island and, most recently, Hallowell.

She has spent nearly a decade on the city’s conservation commission, which she has chaired since 2015, and earlier this month was named the 2022 Old Hallowell Day Citizen of the Year for her volunteerism and civic commitment.

Presnar, who is retired, said that throughout her busy life, she has always made time for outdoor activities, including fishing, golfing and hiking. Her love of the outdoors inspired Presnar to get involved with environmental efforts.

“It’s just how I was brought up,” she said, “to enjoy and respect the outdoors.”

Before moving to Hallowell in 2006, Presnar was involved in Save The Bay, an independent, nonprofit organization in Rhode Island dedicated to watching over local government and others in the Narragansett Bay area for behavior or issues that could harm the area’s environmental quality.

In addition to the Hallowell Conservation Commission, Presnar has been involved with many city groups and organizations, including the Comprehensive Planning Committee, the Planning Board and Hallowell Heart & Soul.

She has also collaborated with organizations, including the tree board, which works to maintain and grow local trees and plants in the city, the Hallowell Arts and Cultural Committee and Vision Hallowell, a Main Street Maine affiliate.

The nine-member conservation commission’s work involves following the city’s comprehensive plan and the commission’s open space plan, which involves protection of the city’s undeveloped and open spaces.

Among its current projects, the commission is looking at improving the water quality in Hallowell. Part of this involves supporting the efforts of Grow Green & Healthy Hallowell, a coalition of residents working to implement local restrictions on pesticide use.

“We are supporting their research and educating residents on reducing the use of pesticides and fertilizers on lawns,” Presnar said. “A lot of that just ends up in the watershed. It ends up in the Kennebec River, so it’s all connected.”

Presnar said she is particularly interested in this because the watershed throughout Hallowell was recently declared “threatened” by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection due to high levels of nonpoint source pollution, which does not come from a single, identifiable source.

“We potentially have a very high level of phosphorus in the (Vaughan) stream,” she said, “which reduces the quality of water, what lives there and the fish habitat.”

This is the second year Presnar has been involved with a Volunteer River Monitoring Program through the Maine DEP. The work, which takes place from May to September, involves obtaining scientific instruments from the state DEP and collecting water quality data.

One of the scientific instruments used is a dissolved oxygen meter, which determines the oxygen percentage in water. Over time, this data helps determine which tributaries are most impacted by nonpoint source pollution.

“That may take years,” Presnar said, “but we have volunteers to do that, and great support from the DEP.”

Through her efforts with the tree board, Presnar and local volunteers also restored the usable area of Granite City Park by more than a half-acre by managing and controlling invasive plants, planting 22 native trees and shrubs and planting 30 twigs, or live staking, along the riverfront.

Presnar said she is particularly proud of efforts by the conservation commission in 2018 to conserve some of the land at the then-Stevens School property, now known as Stevens Commons.

After developer Matt Morrill bought the property, Presnar said he agreed to gift the city 8 acres. The city then worked with the Kennebec Land Trust to put a conservation easement against the land, now known as the Effie L. Berry Conservation Area.

Presnar said this is the only public conserved space in Hallowell. Vaughan Woods is private.

“The citizens of Hallowell and all the public will always have access from Winthrop Street to the 8 acres that is the Berry Conservation Area, behind Stevens Commons, and that connects to the Howard Hill Historical Park in Augusta,” she said.

Although Presnar has worked with other volunteers and organizations, achieving results and receiving accolades, she is not resting on her laurels. Instead, she remains focused on pressing issues affecting the outdoors.

If left unchecked, for example, degrading water quality can have a ripple effect on streams and water throughout Hallowell, impacting wildlife and wildlife corridors and negatively impacting outdoor recreation opportunities. She said harmful changes can happen over decades, and are easy to miss is not monitored closely.

“That’s why we’re trying to pay attention to these things and not get caught off guard,” Presnar said. “When’s the best time to plant a tree? Twenty-five years ago.”

She also seeks to get students involved in efforts to protect and preserve the environment.

“I want to try to get more younger people out into the open spaces and looking at natural resources,” Presnar said. “Because that’s what the future is gonna hold. We’re gonna be long gone, but the streams and soil and forest and woods, we want them to still be here, because that’s why we all live here.”

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