Bailey Island lobsterman and building contractor Guy Baker would like to rebuild the large wharf on his property that was torn to pieces in January’s coastal storms, but there are several unknowns.
Nearly six weeks after back-to-back storms struck the Maine coast on Wednesday, Jan. 10, and Saturday, Jan. 13, the Harpswell resident still doesn’t know what sort of emergency funding he will receive, if any, to rebuild. He doesn’t know how long the town might give him to replace a generations-old structure that didn’t conform to current building codes.
Baker doesn’t know what replacing the wharf would cost, or how long he’d have to wait for a specialty contractor to take on the job. He assumes prices have skyrocketed as property owners rush to repair millions of dollars’ worth of damage along the Maine coast.
Baker isn’t alone. As coastal property owners in Harpswell and elsewhere continue to clean up the mess left behind by the storms, local officials say there is much unease about whether they’ll be able to rebuild strong enough to withstand future storms, how long it will take and how costly it will be.
“It’s kind of an up-in-the-air thing right now, because what happens if I rebuild?” Baker said. “Is it going to happen again? (I’m having) a lot of thoughts like that.”
A long process
Harpswell Harbor Master Paul Plummer said “more than half the town’s docks” sustained damage in the storms.
“It could be something just as minor as a couple boards (having) popped off because of the rising sea levels … or it could be completely gone,” he said, adding that at least 10 local wharfs were totally destroyed.
Plummer said he has been encouraging those affected by the storms to first contact the town’s code enforcement office, which must issue the required permits before property owners can rebuild. Later in the process, Plummer must sign off on marine infrastructure after reviewing its likely impact on navigation.
But until property owners know how much financial relief they may receive from insurance or the government, it’s difficult for them to even get started, he said.
“Everyone’s kind of just in this limbo stage, because they can get going on (local) permitting, but there’s also federal and state permitting that has to be involved,” Plummer said. “You can only go as fast as the government can move, which we know can be fairly slow at times.”
Any financial relief offered to private property owners is likely to be in the form of low- or no-interest loans, he said, which won’t be as helpful as grants would be.
“It’s certainly something, but that money still has to come from somewhere, up front or eventually,” Plummer said. “So, it’s tough. I really feel for the working waterfront. … We know right now that costs are through the roof, and these storms are only going to exacerbate that.”
Unprecedented damage
Ben Martens, executive director of the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association, said a major reason the recovery process has been so dominated by uncertainty is that Maine has never experienced anything as severe as the January storms in terms of coastal damage.
“We’ve been very fortunate in Maine,” Martens said. “This is the first disaster that we’ve faced on the coast that looks like this, and so we haven’t done it before. The state hasn’t done it before. Everybody’s learning on the job.”
Harpswell Town Administrator Kristi Eiane said the town recently submitted an estimate of damage to public infrastructure from the January storms. It assessed the cost of repairs to roads, docks, landings and other public infrastructure at nearly $220,000. The estimate did not include private property damage.
The most expensive line item was the estimated cost to replace the town dock at Pott’s Point, which was completely destroyed, at $120,000. Another $55,000 is needed for damage to roads, Harpswell officials estimated.
Eiane said the estimate excludes storm-related damage to the Cribstone Bridge, which connects Orr’s and Bailey islands. The Maine Department of Transportation is responsible for repairing the bridge and plans to schedule repairs sometime in March through May, Eiane said.
Traffic will be reduced to one lane during repairs, but the bridge won’t be impassable for any long periods, she said.
Eiane said town officials have been notified that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is expected to approve disaster relief for repairs to Maine’s storm-damaged public infrastructure. They are also hoping to receive funds to reimburse residents for the cost to clean up pressure-treated wood and other debris that has collected on town shores.
But those grants won’t cover property damage to Harpswell residents and business owners, whose costs are expected to far exceed those incurred by the town. At best, they’ll likely be offered low-cost loans, officials said.
One particularly expensive mishap during the storms was the sinking of the Jacob Pike, a 60-foot wooden sardine boat, near Dingley Island. According to town officials, the sunken boat has been leaking fuel and is expected to cost at least $125,000 to remove, which may ultimately fall on town residents.
“The owner of the vessel is in communications with the Town and (U.S. Coast Guard) and is investigating options to raise the vessel and have it removed,” the town harbor master’s office posted to its Facebook page. “If the owner of the vessel does not remove the vessel itself, the Town’s Board of Selectmen can deem the vessel abandoned and have (the) owner charged criminally, however in previous cases the courts have found individuals guilty but placed the burden of removing the vessel on the Harpswell taxpayers.”
‘Anxiety, fear, frustration’
Martens, the working waterfront advocate, said there is still much lumber and debris to be hauled away before any major infrastructure repairs can be completed.
Still, members of Maine’s working waterfront are already getting impatient with the slow pace of government as local code enforcement offices are inundated with permit requests, he said.
And that’s not to mention contractor backlogs. Wharf builders are having to prioritize larger commercial projects first, with some telling residential property owners not to expect their repairs to begin until mid-2025, The Maine Monitor reported.
“When we’re thinking of trying to move fast to rebuild for the next fishing season, while also thinking about how you build something that’s going to withstand the next storm, and also deal with permitting and regulations, there’s a lot,” Martens said. “And we’re hearing the anxiety and the fear and the frustration from fishermen right now.”
He said storms like the ones that struck in January are going to become a regular occurrence because of climate change, adding that experts are expecting major coastal flooding to occur every five years on average.
“There will be a next time,” Martens said. “We’ve already had high tides again (since the storms). There was flooding in parts of our coast again. … Flooding is going to be a regular thing.”
Many waterfront business owners are concerned they won’t have the resources to rebuild big enough and strong enough to withstand future storms, he said. It will depend partly on what sort of strings are attached to emergency loans.
The Maine Legislature has proposed allocating $50 million for storm recovery projects, but Martens said those funds likely would be spread too thin for working waterfront members to count on for significant relief.
The possible need for federal flood insurance is a major concern for waterfront businesses considering whether to take out subsidized U.S. Small Business Administration emergency relief loans for repairs, if they are offered.
“Typical loans for working waterfront infrastructure require that you have flood insurance, and flood insurance is prohibitively expensive,” Martens said. “The Port Clyde (Fishermen’s) Co-op had a loan that they ended up paying down a couple of years ago because their flood insurance was close to $50,000 a year.”
