By Tom McPheeters,

Special to the Biddeford Gazette

More than a year after a catastrophic storm decimated Biddeford’s beaches, coastal properties and roads, community organizations are calling for the city to move beyond cleanup and embrace a plan that would prepare coastal beaches and dunes for the next big storm.

Armed with fresh research on beach erosion and how best to combat it, the Biddeford Coastal Preservation Coalition (BCPC) is advocating with the city  to develop a plan to restore and strengthen dunes as the best way to protect our vulnerable beaches.

The BCPC is a coalition of community groups from Hills Beach, Biddeford Pool, Middle and Fortunes Rocks beaches and Granite Point. Most of these beach communities are in the process of forming their own working groups under the BCPC umbrella. The coalition is also allied with other regional groups, notably the SOS (Save Our Shores) Saco Bay group that got its start in Camp Ellis six years ago to advocate for federal relief from damage done by the Saco Bay Jetty and has since become a clearing house for climate-related information.

In December, the BCPC presented at the Coastal Resiliency workshop with Biddeford City Council and requested that Biddeford develop a comprehensive Coastal/Beach Management Program into its 2023 Climate Action Plan.  According to BPCP President Kimberly Matthews, the group is advocating that the plan prioritize resilience when restoring beaches, dunes and marshes. Local infrastructure such as roads should also include resilience measures. New beach-facing buildings, building restorations and seawalls are already governed by state regulations.

Matthews said that BCPC is advocating for what is well established as best practices for beach protection — restoration of dunes and replanting of sea grass to allow for natural regeneration of the dunes. “Dunes and beaches serve as the first lines of defense during storms, protecting coastal infrastructure from erosion and flooding, and providing critical habitat to birds and other wildlife. These areas are also vulnerable to sea level rise,” the group notes.

In response, the Biddeford City Council has established a Sustainability Commission, which met for the first time Tuesday. Commissioners agreed to take up the BCPC proposals at future meetings, along with other sustainability issues.

By good fortune, a team of researchers from the University of New England had been measuring some of the Biddeford beaches before the January 2024 storms, and their work since the storms have produced precise information on just how much damage occurred from those storms, and how much the landscape has recovered since then.

The results of the UNE research is summarized in the BPCP year-end newsletter. Among the findings are that an astonishing 28 percent destruction of dune area on the four beaches they studied in Saco, Biddeford, and Kennebunkport. But while beaches tended to replentish themselves, dunes were repaired at a much slower rate. And the UNE research made clear that dunes are the most important line of defense against further erosion or damage from storms.

Dune restoration is already under way by a few private owners, and just recently the Biddeford Pool Conservation Trust, which now owns the former Marie Joseph property in Biddeford Pool, mounted a large, all-volunteer effort at their new property.

But climate mitigation is hardly a sure thing. “The estimate to have the beach grass planted professionally came in at $148,000,” recalls Lucie Fontaine, chair of the Biddeford Pool Preservation Trust.  “This seemed like an enormous amount to spend on a project that could again be wiped out by a bad storm.”

Having done a small planting the year before, she knew the cost of the stalks was relatively low and that the planning process was relatively simple. Fontaine ordered 12,000 stalks of sea grass from the supplier she had used before, and paid just $2,040. “We put out a call for volunteers, and within days we had sufficient planters to do the job.  

“The community was amazing!  I had expected it to take the full two weeks to get the stalks planted, but in the end we pulled it off in just three afternoons with 35 volunteers including 14 from UNE. Now we wait to see how the grass takes and if it survives the high tides.  But the plan is definitely to continue the project next year!”

Dune restoration in beaches like those at Biddeford Pool and Fortunes Rocks face several obstacles. The main issue is that a significant stretch of that two-mile beach is backed by riprap or sea walls. The UNE researched highlighted what has long been known, that beaches with sea walls do not recover as quickly as beaches with dunes because of the way the waves rebound.

The second issue is the high cost of bringing in new sand to build up the dunes after a major storm. The UNE researchers reported that in the few cases where private owners scraped sand from the beach to build up their dunes, they had some success, but the beach itself was slow to recover.

One potential answer to that issue is the dredge that York County purchased in 2022, and is now awaiting its first mission, probably in Wells. The issue of the dredge and how to use it most effectively was raised at a March 17 symposium organized by SOS Saco Bay, when it was revealed that Biddeford is the only coastal municipality in the county that has not signed on to an agreement to use the dredge.

Thomas McPheeters is a former journalist and a Biddeford resident. He can be reached at tommcp@me.com

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