Resilience in the Eastern Bay

Spotlighting projects and partnerships from the last 5 years

Casco Bay Estuary Partnership

May 13, 2022

Resilience in Casco Bay

This StoryMap focuses on highlights of Casco Bay Estuary Partnership's (CBEP) climate resilience work since 2017 in the Eastern Bay.

Communities in this region, like many along Maine’s coast, are partially or wholly located on narrow peninsulas, usually with a single access roadway. Where roads cross tidal wetlands, they may be vulnerable to sea level rise and storm surge due to low elevation. Adjacent tidal marshes can also be impacted by inadequate culverts that restrict tidal flow and alter plant and animal communities while leaving marshes vulnerable to sea level rise, particularly where historic modification occurred to produce salt hay, ice, or mill power. And demographic characteristics of these communities, such as an aging population, older residents living alone, high reliance on natural resource economies, and high levels of self-employment, combine to create a population that is at higher risk from coastal hazards. In the face of Covid-19 and climate change, CBEP and its partners have quickly adapted to continue engaging the communities of Casco Bay when they needed it most.

CBEP has been working with Eastern Bay municipalities and federal, state, and nonprofit partners on several projects to help ensure that the region is socially, ecologically, and economically resilient.

Some of Casco Bay Estuary Partnership's projects in the Eastern Bay

The Living Shorelines Pilot Project

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The Living Shorelines Pilot Project, under the leadership of Maine Coastal Program and Maine Geological Survey, is testing the ability to use native material such as shell, wood, and vegetation to stabilize eroding shorelines while maintaining natural processes and habitat values.With rising sea levels, decreased biodiversity, and increasingly severe storms, living shorelines could contribute to Maine's coastal resilience. Casco Bay Estuary Partnership is implementing a 5-year monitoring program to track the stability, durability, and effectiveness of different experimental design approaches. This project will pave the way for potential living shorelines projects in Maine and beyond.

Several New England states received grants from NOAA to install small living shorelines projects. Three sites in Casco Bay were installed in Spring of 2020 by volunteers and a project team consisting of staff from the Maine Coastal Program, Maine Geological Survey, Maine Department of Transportation, Casco Bay Estuary Partnership, The Nature Conservancy - Maine, Maine Coast Heritage Trust, Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust, and the Town of Brunswick.

Video by Greater Portland Council of Governments

Click on the sites to the right to find out more about why each site was chosen.

Lanes Island Site, Yarmouth

The Lanes Island treatment in the Royal River Estuary integrates pile-driven and cabled logs, sand, soil, and planted vegetation into a terraced structure designed to protect a highly erosive sandy bluff on the south shore of the island.

Maquoit Bay Conservation Lands, Brunswick

On the edge of an eroding fringing marsh, specially designed coir bags and Tensar Georeef baskets were filled with recycled oyster shells and secured along the shorelines. Since the coir bags are biodegradable and the Tensar Georeef bags are synthetic, use of the two side by side allows for a limited comparison of efficacy and durability. Over the winter, the hardwood tree trunks act as ramps to redirect and break up ice away from the marsh edge, reducing erosive forces from ice buildup, movement, and melting.

Wharton Point, Brunswick

At a salt marsh at the head of Maquoit Bay, a third treatment site incorporated an in situ log, coir bagged oyster shell, and Tensar Georeef baskets to stabilize the marsh edge.

Adaptive Management

Monitoring has documented that some design elements are performing better than others. Maine Geological Survey (MGS) took the lead to repair and in some cases, redesign treatments, as deemed necessary. For example, at Wharton Point, coir bags broke down faster than anticipated. In May 2022, MGS worked with the Town of Brunswick to redesign the use of coir fabric and shell. Rather than tying down individual coir bags, groups of three bags were rolled together into individual coir "tootsie rolls" that weighed about 90 pounds. About half of the "tootsie rolls" were wrapped in geogrid, while the other half was left bare, and the entire installation was secured with another layer of coir.

Dan Bannon (GEI), Jared Woolston (Town of Brunswick), Pete Slovinksy (MGS), Steve Dickson (MGS), and Charlotte Nutt (MGS) hard at work at Wharton Point, photos by GPCOG

Route 216 Tidal Restoration Feasibility Study

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Route 216 Project

In 2020-21, Casco Bay Estuary Partnership collaborated with the Town of Phippsburg, Maine Coastal Program, Kennebec Estuary Land Trust, NOAA, and Acadia Civil Works on a feasibility study to design a replacement structure where Route 216 crosses a tidal creek and Small Point Marsh. CBEP managed the project, assessed the adjacent tidal marsh, and is providing technical support and funding to the community.

The site was chosen because the existing culvert has deteriorated, sea level rise is predicted to overtop the road, and because tidal exchange into the tidal marsh is severely restricted by the undersized culvert, causing degradation of the surrounding habitat. An improved design would both restore the marsh and enhance road infrastructure, allowing for expansion of the marsh into low-lying adjacent areas as sea levels rise.

While marsh restoration contributes to sea level rise mitigation and ecological resilience, the project also fosters the greater resilience of the region. As the only road in or out of Small Point, improving its infrastructure will ensure that residents are able to evacuate and emergency services still have access in the case of extreme storms or flooding. The feasibility study report was recently published, but the project is still in the early stages so more information is to come.

Coastal Climate Resilience Pilot Project

The state’s climate action plan developed in 2020, Maine Won’t Wait , includes a set of strategies designed to help Maine mitigate and adapt to climate change. One recommendation was to strengthen state support for communities to do so since many towns don’t have the resources or capacity, or simply don’t know where to start. This pilot project was funded by the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future in 2021 to further develop climate resilience planning and engagement. We were funded for the coastal cohort, one of three cohorts awarded statewide.

The Cohort: Phippsburg, West Bath, and Harpswell

Adjacent communities with long, narrow peninsulas or islands vulnerable to storm events
Similar demographics indicative of social vulnerability such as older adults, people living alone, and a high degree of self-employment
Varying levels of capacity and readiness. Harpswell has experience with coastal resilience planning, while West Bath and Phippsburg had less capacity and experience
Reliance on the natural resources economy
Some history of regional collaboration

The Service Provider Team organized and facilitated a three-part workshop series designed to meet cohort communities where they are and leverage the experience of cohort members who had alread initiated climate resilience planning.

Workshop 1: Prioritizing Local Climate-Related Risks
Workshop 2: Implementation Actions that Build Community Resilience
Workshop 3: Securing Funding and Financing: The Funder Landscape and Proposal Development

In order to promote transferable, scalable engagement models for community climate resilience planning, our workshop series was structured in part around the New England Environmental Finance Center’s Climate Project Prioritization Toolkit (Toolkit), adapted from the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit. The Toolkit’s six steps are summarized above.

Pilot Project Outcome

The towns agreed that working collaboratively would be the best approach after forming new relationships and discovering shared priorities. They created a joint proposal for funding to conduct resilience analyses and cost estimates for three town landings to measure their vulnerability and inform plans for maintenance or upgrades. The project is estimated to conclude in September 2022 and will prepare the communities for additional funding geared towards infrastructure repair or upgrades.

The three statewide pilot projects informed the new Community Resilience Partnership program. CBEP and NE-EFC, along with Kennebec Estuary Land Trust, was awarded a Service Provider grant in 2022 to help five Southern Midcoast communities enroll in the Partnership program.

Social Resilience Project

The Social Resilience Project is geared toward coastal communities that face increased vulnerability to severe weather events that are becoming more frequent. The project team worked with six island and peninsular towns with limited road access and two larger service communities. The region is served by two emergency management agencies and two planning districts. These peninsular communities have limited road infrastructure and access to emergency services, high isolation of residents, aging housing stock, and a heavy reliance on natural resource economies. The service center communities provide resources like hospitals, groceries, fuel, schools, and employment.

Project Overview

In addition to fostering connections between communities, this project was aimed at creating relationships between four sectors: municipal, conservation, social services, and emergency management so they can better provide to the most socially vulnerable residents in their community. Using a virtual tabletop exercise, representatives from these sectors identify their strengths and areas of improvement in preparation, response, and recovery during a disaster.

What is Social Vulnerability?

Social Vulnerability relates to the characteristics of a person or community that affect their capacity to anticipate, confront, repair, and recover from the effects of a disaster, such as an extreme storm. Some examples of factors that might affect a person’s social vulnerability include socioeconomic status, household composition, minority status, and vehicle access.

The Team conducted a virtual tabletop exercise modeling an extreme storm event. The Team guided participants with a StoryMap and the Maine Coastal Risk Explorer , a customized social vulnerability index for Maine coastal communities. Studies have shown that these exercises have the ability to identify opportunities for enhanced collaboration.

Through the tabletop exercise, participants identified opportunities to strengthen collaboration across sectors, facilitate regional planning for social resilience, and increase support for vulnerable populations. The Team is currently developing guidance documents and outreach materials that can be shared with communities in the region, as well as guidance documents about the exercise so it can be replicated in other locations across Maine.

Engaging the Community

CBEP also provides Community Engagement Grants to support new partnerships and innovative projects that engage communities with Casco Bay and its watershed. For example, CBEP awarded Kennebec Estuary Land Trust (KELT) with a grant to hold a children’s conservation program at a clam flat in Phippsburg.

KELT teamed up with Phippsburg Land Trust, Phippsburg Elementary School, Phippsburg Shellfish Committee, and local harvesters. The event was intended to educate 4th graders about the importance of healthy intertidal ecosystems and their connections to Casco Bay’s rich history and economy.

Students learned how to dig for clams from local shellfish harvesters and took them home. In addition, they seeded the mudflats with young clams from Downeast Institute’s clam hatchery to ensure a strong population going forward.

Southern Maine offers a unique opportunity to get in touch with the surrounding ecosystem that a more urban environment cannot. Involving youth in these activities fosters a sense of connectedness with the place they call home. We hope they are inspired to be proud stewards of the land as they grow older.

Looking Ahead

Casco Bay Estuary Partnership is excited to continue work in the climate resilience sphere, especially now that there is more focus on climate change and social justice on a state and federal level.