Collins vows to help rebuild Harpswell waterfront during visit

U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, vowed to help secure funding to rebuild Harpswell’s storm-damaged working waterfront during a visit to the town on Saturday, Jan. 20.

Collins, who visited Henry Allen’s Seafood on Lookout Point and two other heavily damaged sites on Bailey Island, called the destruction “heartbreaking.”

“I want to do everything that I can to try to secure assistance, working with the governor, with the local community, with the rest of the (congressional) delegation, in order to assist these families in their time of need,” Collins said before a group of lobstermen and other waterfront workers and advocates during her visit. “The devastation is incredible.”

Collins said she would be looking to agencies including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Economic Development Administration and U.S. Small Business Administration as potential sources of emergency funding.

“We’re looking at everything,” the senator said, while noting that it’s easier to secure federal funds for public infrastructure than for private property such as waterfront businesses.

Back-to-back storms on Wednesday, Jan. 10, and Saturday, Jan. 13, devastated Maine’s working waterfront, causing millions of dollars’ worth of damage to piers, docks, fish houses and other coastal infrastructure. An earlier storm on Monday, Dec. 18, caused widespread power outages and inland flooding.

The storms caused severe damage to “the majority” of working waterfront infrastructure along the Maine coast, said Ben Martens, executive director of the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association, who also attended Collins’ visit.

“It’s one of the most frightening things that we’ve seen,” Martens said. He and others in attendance expressed gratitude to the senator for visiting some of Harpswell’s most heavily damaged areas on a bitterly cold Saturday morning.

Chris Hole, owner of Henry Allen’s, showed Collins and others the aftermath of storm surge that flooded portions of his business and lifted up a large section of his recently renovated wharf, dislodging and damaging the pilings underneath.

“We’re going to have to do a major renovation again,” Hole said. “We rebuilt the deck two years ago … but the underneath of this is 60 years old.”

Ironically, Hole said he considers himself lucky. Many other wharf owners in the area saw their structures completely obliterated, he said.

That’s what happened to Guy Baker, a lobsterman and building contractor who lives on the north end of Bailey Island. Collins visited Baker’s property on Saturday to speak with him and survey the remains of his wharf, built by his great-grandfather, which the storms reduced to a pile of lumber and debris.

Baker said he also lost 10 feet of his seawall, adding that neither of the structures was insured.

“It’s got to be hard, emotionally as well as economically,” Collins said to Baker during her visit. “I’m so sorry that you’re going through this.”

Jerry Leeman III, founder and CEO of the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association, was among those who accompanied Collins on her Harpswell visit.

Leeman said the damage to Maine’s working waterfront will take years to rebuild from and is likely to cause a cascade of economic difficulties for fishermen as surviving wharves become overloaded with demand.

“Now we’re just tightening the belt even harder,” he said.

Baker added that not all of Harpswell fishermen’s losses were visible to those surveying the wreckage, and that many essential assets were lost to the bottom of the bay.

“Whoever had lobster traps close in, they’re gone,” he said.

Craig Rogers was among the Harpswell lobstermen who welcomed Collins as she arrived at Mackerel Cove on Bailey Island, another working waterfront site that suffered extreme damage from the storms.

“The whole wharf lifted up – it was going like an accordion,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. … I didn’t think we had that much water in the Atlantic Ocean.”

Rogers told Collins it meant a lot that she took the time to meet with waterfront workers and hear their concerns, and he urged her to follow through on her vow to help them rebuild.

“That’s why we voted for you,” Rogers said with a smile. “You damn well better do your job.”

For her part, Collins said she would continue to work on securing economic relief for Maine’s working waterfront even after others have moved on from the recent storms and the coastal devastation they caused.

“I haven’t moved on – it remains a priority for me,” she said.

Collins acknowledged the role climate change has played in the frequency and severity of storms, as well as the impact of warming waters on Maine fisheries in general.

She noted the work of Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, in convening the Maine Climate Council, which has been studying ways to make Maine’s working waterfronts more resilient in the face of climate change.

Collins added that the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, passed in 2021, which she helped draft, also seeks to address that problem.

The senator said she agreed with residents who say the recent storms have brought home the reality of climate change.

“I think this does make it very real,” Collins said.

Have a comment or news tip? Email J. Craig Anderson at craig@harpswellanchor.org.