|
Article about Sweet Pond from the Guilford Gazette:
A Vision of Community by Rustin Nethercott
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." — Mahatma Gandhi
The average American takes a great deal from the earth. Whether it is cool air to breathe, cold water to drink, or wood for shelter, Mother Nature provides the necessary ingredients for a healthy life. However, through Sweet Pond Eco, Zoe Kopp and her husband T Namaya decided it was time to give back.
Since 1985, creating an ecological community has been a dream of Zoe (who I recently interviewed on her take on the endeavor) and T’s. However getting the idea off the ground took time and effort, finally finding its way into the world just recently. After living in Tallahassee, Florida where green communities were abundant, Zoe moved to Vermont, in hopes of bringing Vermont something it sadly lacked. Ecological Communities.
To start, they bought one hundred acres of land in 2006. They chose Sweet Pond Road in Guilford, a town which both Zoe and T enjoy and have friends in. Two of these acres were sold separately, leaving the rest to build a greener world from the ground up. But Guilford was a natural choice for the couple. Liberal and progressive thinking, as exists in Guilford, provides the building blocks of an environmentally potent society. To T and Zoe, a community means more then a group of people simply living in close proximity. They see it as a moral obligation to help your community, to be there for your neighbors, in a tight knit environment that is both physically and emotionally close.
As Zoe said in her interview, “Make sure you know your neighbors well enough that you can borrow a cup of sugar.”
Zoe and T have big plans for this community. They see its’ inhabitants having social gatherings like potlucks and monthly meetings, in which the couple dozen men and woman would make decisions about group efforts needed in Sweet Pond Eco. They also saw the populace sharing gardens, snow blowers, cars, and other miscellaneous things that, by cutting back on, could save energy.
There are nine houses to be built, one of them being inhabited by T and Zoe. The houses, designed by Austin Design, are pre-made, all designed in the same eco-friendly way. Half of the houses have a system in place called “passive solar.” This means that due to window placement, the houses gets more natural sunlight, leading to less energy used on heating and lighting. The houses will also get heat from a central wood heating system.
The building of Sweet Pond Eco is not without its criticism though. Although the majority of the immediate neighbors to it thought it was a good thing, a few Sweet Pond Road residents were less than thrilled, feeling that a housing development of this proportion would negatively affect the atmosphere of the neighborhood. One neighbor had concerns that with nine houses being built, there would be a potential influx of 36 new people in Guilford. This could also result in eighteen more cars on one small dirt road, and a surplus of noise pollution.
However, Zoe is confident that these factors will not be a problem. She sees the noise as being at a minimum, and believes that with the purchase of one extra car for everyone to share, the residents of the community can limit themselves to one car a family.
Zoe Kopp has a lucid idea of how she thinks the Eco community will be in 2050, forty-two years from now. “In 2050, people can still look at Vermont and still call it the Green Mountain State.”
And that is what this project is all about for Zoe and T. It’s retaining the world’s beauty for future generations. Whether you support establishing more housing opportunities in our small town or not, it is undeniable that this new project offers a significant change for Guilford. But change is hollow without the correct chemistry for a positive result. It is the men and woman in the community whose job it will be to decide how positive an undertaking Sweet Pond Eco will be. It may end up being a problematic venture, or a significantly progressive one.
To learn more about Sweet Pond Eco, you can visit them at their website, www.sweetpondecocommunity.com
| 
