In response to your March 7 editorial, “Replacement may be only feasible option for bridge,” the current developments surrounding the fate of Saco’s Stackpole Bridge require additional facts and context.

Rehabilitation of the 165-year-old bridge, Maine’s oldest stone bridge on a public roadway, is still a viable alternative under the low-interest loan program recently offered to the City by the Maine Department of Transportation.

The loan terms do not stipulate how the city should use the project money for Stackpole Bridge, but limits the offer to $650,000 maximum or 50 percent of the project cost, whichever is less. The city’s deadline for accepting the MDOT loan offer is June 30, after which the money will no longer be available.

The Saco City Council has shown flexibility and foresight in its desire to accept the loan in some form while continuing to accept rehabilitation as a possible solution. A public hearing on the entire $990,000 bond project is scheduled for April 7, with a referendum vote to follow in early June.

The Friends of Stackpole Bridge, an advocacy group that formed in 2007 after the bridge was first scheduled to be replaced, have continued to tap the expertise of preservation engineers in Maine and New England, including the firm Structures North, which was hired by the City of Saco in 2012 to design a preservation plan for the bridge that would also allow for two-way traffic and maximum weight loads for trucks and emergency vehicles.

Engineers will meet this week to review new data, which presents a clearer picture of the bridge’s internal composition, which in turn will allow for more precise calculations and potential cost savings.

Additionally, the Friends group has developed an aggressive private fundraising plan for historic rehabilitation of the bridge.

This effort of facilitating a lower rehabilitation price coupled with securing private grant donations ensures a comparative price to a modular concrete bridge.

Saco citizens can be confident that a fiscally conservative and logical approach to saving Stackpole Bridge exists.

We are leaving no stone unturned in reaching our goal of seeing Simpson Road re-opened to all traffic, access to all city services for five Saco households restored and a fully functioning historic bridge preserved for future generations’ daily use.

Stackpole Bridge exists on a regional and national stage as a rare, 19th-century masonry landmark. As one of the few remaining stone bridges in the state, its preservation “merits the utmost consideration” as stated in a March 4 letter written by Maine Historic Preservation’s Assistant Director Kirk Mohney to Saco’s Historic Preservation Commission.

The loss of Portland’s grand Union Station in 1961 reminds us that the demolition of unique historic structures has far reaching and final consequences.

Now is the time for the people of Saco, along with Mainers far and wide, to act most vigilant in preventing a similar tragic outcome for Stackpole Bridge.

-Inga Sandvoss Browne, Susan Littlefield and Margaret Mills members, Friends of Stackpole Bridge, Saco