The storm this past weekend damaged many of Maine's state park beaches. Storm-related flooding damaged dune systems at Reid State Park and Popham Beach. The sand dunes serve as natural barriers against storm surges and flooding. The high waves removed a large amount of sand and debris.
"[At] Reid State Park, we have a very prominent dune system that has a walkway — or I should say had a walkway — going along the top of it and then a staircase to get down to the beach," said Andy Cutko, the Director of the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands. "Much of that walkway is gone, which is created a very challenging situation for people even to get down to the beach."
This is the third storm-related flooding to occur in a month, with storms on Dec. 18, Jan. 10, and Jan. 13. Cutko says he's never seen storms this frequent or intense.
"It was kind of like a one-two-punch," said Peter Slovinsky, a marine geologist with the Maine Geological Survey. "The first storm took out a good amount of dunes and flattened the dunes. If you have deeper water, you can have a larger wave coming in interacting with the coastline. So a lot of the dunes which were eroded in the first storm, were hit twice as hard."
Before starting any restoration efforts, Cutko says the Parks department will first need to finish surveying the damages. There are several strategies for responding to the damages, including installing artificial dunes. A few weeks ago, the department announced a plan to try and use Christmas trees to rebuild sand dunes lost in December's storm at Popham Beach.
On a long-term level, Slovinsky says communities needs to take this storm as a lesson to figure out how best they can adapt to long-term flooding.
"When we are rebuilding, do we bring things back to exactly the way they were — which was clearly vulnerable?" said Slovinsky. "Or do we think about how we make our community our coastal communities more resilient in the face of a changing climate and rising sea level, and intensity?"
