Coastal homeowners will get a one-time chance to raise sea walls under a new Maine law.
Under the law, property owners will be allowed to elevate existing sea walls up to two feet to accommodate anticipated sea level rise.
State representative Bob Foley, R-Wells, said he proposed the measure after witnessing damage wrought by back-to-back coastal storms in 2024.
Foley said he wanted to give homeowners options to protect their properties from future damage likely from bigger storm surge driven by climate change.
The bill was opposed by environmental groups concerned that extending sea walls could threaten sensitive sand dunes ecosystems in Southern Maine.
Despite heavy restrictions included in the final bill, Foley thinks it can still offer property owners improved defenses.
"I don’t see it as a panacea for everybody but certainly I think with the provisions put in there I think it will be helpful for a number of towns along the coast," Foley said.
The law has provisions aimed at reducing damage to surrounding properties and shoreline.
Those include requirements to mitigate erosion caused by raising the wall, constructing sand dunes or planting vegetation on the landward side of the wall, elevating protected buildings on posts and pilings and obtaining permission from neighbors that do not have seawalls.
Projects will need to get a permit reviewed by state regulators.
Maine Audubon Director of Advocacy Francesca Gundrum said that even with restrictions, the organization would prefer landowners consider natural, less intrusive methods of shoreline buffers.
"We want to help incentivize and promote nature based solutions instead of solutions that are hardening the coast, which we think we need to start getting away from," Gundrum said.
The new law follows recent rule changes by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection that encouraged nature-based or "green infrastructure" methods for shoreline erosion and made it tougher to get approval for artificial, hardened projects.
Rob Wood, director of the state's bureau of land resources, said the seawall law does not conflict with the new rules, since they do not apply to coastal dunes. Maine banned building seawalls in dune systems in 1983 and the new law does not permit new construction, Wood said.
Governor Janet Mills signed the law in late May and it went into effect immediately.
