Gov. Janet Mills speaks about the Maine Infrastructure Rebuilding and Resilience Commission while surrounded by its members during a press conference at MaineHealth Lincoln Hospital in Damariscotta on Wednesday, May 7. Mills introduced a final report from the commission, which includes a 50-step plan to better prevent the impacts of severe weather on Maine communities. (Molly Rains photo)
Standing beside large, glossy photos of Damariscotta’s back parking lot, Gov. Janet Mills told Lincoln County and state leaders Wednesday, May 7 that Maine must continue to prepare for the winter storms of the future.
“We are entering a new era of natural disasters that will threaten the future of communities like Damariscotta and communities across the state of Maine, inland and coastal,” Mills said.
At the press conference, which convened at MaineHealth Lincoln Hospital that afternoon, Mills introduced the final report of the Maine Infrastructure Rebuilding and Resilience Commission to a statewide audience. The commission convened in May 2024 in response to the previous winter’s extreme weather and the frequent severe weather seen in Maine in recent years.
Maine has seen eight disaster declarations and one emergency declaration since March 2022, according to the report. All of these were related to severe storms, with impacts that reached every corner of the state.
“In Maine, we no longer hear and see of the storms of yesterday,” Mills said. “The ocean is warming, the sea is rising, and the winds are wilder.”
To prepare for further impacts of Maine’s changing environment, the Maine Infrastructure Rebuilding and Resilience Commission was charged with evaluating the state’s response to recent severe storms and developing a long-term plan to enhance Maine’s readiness for future severe weather.
The resulting 80-page report, delivered less than one year after the group convened, delivers the commission’s answer to that charge. The plan includes 50 action steps broken into three focus areas.
The first focus area is strengthening infrastructure, from roads and bridges to energy infrastructure like power lines. This focus area includes steps like expanding funding for infrastructure development in Maine’s most vulnerable areas and improving data collection on high risk and frequently impacted areas, such as areas that often lose power during storms.
The second focus area is improving disaster preparedness, response, and rebuilding. This focus area calls for improving communications among first responders, community leaders, and the general public during and after emergencies, as well as improving relationships with people in Maine’s most vulnerable communities to help spread information about risk and safety during storm events and disasters.
The third focus area revolves around sustaining momentum in resilience planning going forward through what the plan refers to as “strategic investments:” expanding resilience loan and insurance programs and investing in local councils, planning commissions, and emergency response networks are among the goals outlined in this section.
“The changes to our weather and our climate are harming people, communities, and businesses across our state,” Mills said. “We must prevent as much damage as possible and be ready to quickly recover when storms take their toll.”
To get to MaineHealth Lincoln Hospital, where the commission presented their report, press conference attendees drove through a zone of construction on the causeway connecting the hospital with Bristol Road in Damariscotta. Cindy Wade, hospital president, identified that work as one example of a climate resilience project already under way that would improve operations at her facility and make life safer for Maine residents.
The project is intended to remedy flooding of the causeway that took place during severe storms and floods in recent years, Wade said. The floods prevented ambulances being able to access the hospital via the primary route.
Later, the group followed Damariscotta Town Manager Andrew Dorr to the downtown parking lot, where a climate resilience project to prevent flooding of the downtown is nearing completion. The project includes a storm water retention tank installed beneath the parking lot that can handle “a 6-inch rainstorm in a six-hour period,” Dorr said.
In the parking lot, downtown business owners spoke about the impacts to their livelihoods from floods and hopes that the new infrastructure improvements would reduce the prevalence of those impacts in the future.
The uncertainty of federal funding, including the proposed elimination of the Federal Emergency Management Association, will “fundamentally complicate” resilience efforts in Maine moving forward, commission co-Chairs Linda Nelson and Dan Tishman wrote in their introduction to the report. But the pair still urged investment in climate resilience, citing a report by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce indicating that every $1 spent on climate resilience saves communities an average of $13 in expenses from storm impacts, cleanup, and recovery.
“Your presence here today underscores the importance of the work the commission is doing,” Dorr said to the group at Lincoln Hospital. “The plan provides clear guidance and a road map for communities like ours to be stronger, rebound faster from storm impacts, and potentially mitigate the effects storms have on our infrastructure in the first place.”
To read the full report from the Maine Infrastructure Rebuilding and Resilience Commission, go to maine.gov/future/infrastructure-commission.
