More Maine roads may be abandoned as climate change brings worse floods

In southern Maine, two towns have decided to abandon a frequently flooded coastal road. But in a touristy section of Hancock County, state officials recently went in the other direction, committing to repair a road that’s faced its own share of flooding and storm damage, despite the risk of similar issues in the future.

As climate change causes heavier storms in Maine, transportation officials say they’ll more frequently have to answer these questions about whether to maintain low-lying roads that are prone to flooding, whether driven by tides and winds along the coast, or by intense rainfall in other parts of the state.

In some areas, officials may decide to permanently close low-lying sections of a road, rather than spending money to fix them over and over again, or improve a minor road when alternate routes already exist.

“I think that is in our future,” Joyce Taylor, chief engineer for Maine Department of Transportation, said of abandoning flood-prone roads that get relatively little traffic.

Most parts of Maine are confronting some version of these questions.

Municipalities along the mountainous Route 2 corridor in western Maine saw widespread road damage from a storm last December, and are dealing with more frequent washouts in general.

Riverfront communities such as Bangor, Hallowell, Skowhegan, Lincoln , Gardiner, Augusta and Lewiston regularly contend with the threat of rising water.

And communities all along the coast are contending with storm surge and flooding.

In Cape Elizabeth and Scarborough, local officials have decided to permanently close Sawyer Road where it crosses the Spurwink River, which will force drivers to use alternate routes between the neighboring communities.

On Mount Desert Island, there was much deliberation after the Seawall portion of Route 102A was repeatedly pounded by storms this winter. Many locals wanted to rebuild the damaged section of the road that has been closed for months, and only recently did the Maine Department of Transportation commit to repairing and re-opening it .

“How long do you continue to fight Mother Nature?” Dale Doughty, the agency’s deputy commissioner, said Friday about confronting the reality of climate change. “It comes down to a value judgment. We need to take a hard look at how we fund road repairs and improvements.”

Maine DOT is developing a database that will help the department identify which roads are most vulnerable, according to Taylor. Recurring road washouts are obviously a concern, but it is not just the extent of damage that matters, she said. A road that repeatedly gets covered by roughly a foot or more of water for days at a time, even if it escapes significant damage, can cause its own major safety issues.

“Communities were literally cut off” in the Rumford area during the December 2023 storm , Taylor said. “Our job is to convey people safely, especially in storms. Emergency access is something we have to consider if we go in and spend money.”

In cases where the state decides to make roads more resilient to storms, there can be other factors that complicate those plans, Taylor said.

She cited the Route 1 dike project in Machias as an example. The dike, which conveys Route 1 over the Middle River’s outlet at the Machias River, frequently floods during coastal storms.

As currently configured, the dike helps protect properties on its north side from minor flooding. The state drew up plans to make the dike portion of Route 1 less vulnerable to more severe floods and, at the urging of federal officials, included improved fish passage into the Middle River.

But those plans alarmed waterfront property owners on the Middle River, who said an open bridge span would result in more flooding of their land. It also raised concerns about flooding a former landfill site on the north side of the road, and the potential for pollution to leach into the water.

As a result, the state changed its plans . It decided not to have an open bridge span in the dike, but to restrict flow into the mouth of the Middle River with a fully gated culvert system.

Factors like these are only part of what Maine DOT has to consider when weighing whether to raise a section of road above anticipated flood levels, Taylor said. Raising just one part could create a funnel effect when floods do occur, directing water into places that were safe prior to the changes being made.

Plus, some communities might face repeated floods anyway, even if their roads are made more resilient. If there’s a chance that local residents may move to safer places to avoid floods, it would be a wasted investment to rebuild roads that would later go unused.

“It’s very complicated,” Taylor said. “We have to have some pretty tough conversations with people.”