On July 1 at 6 p.m.at the Southport Town Hall, a special town vote will be held concerning Hendricks Head Beach. I would like to explain why I encourage people to vote yes. 

Hendricks Head has been integral to Southport Island for hundreds of years and is no stranger to massive storms. Dating back to light-keeper logs in the 1800s, Southporters recorded 20-footwaves, schooners grounded in unforgiving storms, and massive boulders shifting dozens of feet. The storm of 1978 caused significant damage to the beach, the road, and the boathouse.  

But the Sou’easters of 2023 and 2024 broke all records as storm surge combined with king tides and multiple inches of rain delivered a massive hit to Hendricks Head Beach. Those storms caused at least $60,000 in damage to the seawall and beach road and cut off emergency access to homes.  

Last year I joined a small team of volunteers who were already thinking about how to make Hendricks Head more resilient to storms like these in the future. The Southport Resilience Network advocated for the town and Sunrise Ecologic to assess the vulnerability of the beach and the road to rising sea levels and more intense coastal storms. 

Some might argue that such powerful storms are infrequent and don’twarrant upgrades to Hendricks, but the data are telling a different story. Maine had four “100-year” storms in only four months from 2023 to 2024; our sea level has risen almost a foot since 1950; and coastal storms are shifting from Nor’easters to Sou’easters and running right up the Sheepscot.  

Maine is also projected to lose between 40-45% of its total dry beach area by 2050. Beaches backed by seawalls are particularly vulnerable, in part because erosive wave energy gets deflected by the wall back down onto the beach. If the seawall has an undersized storm drain like at Hendricks, additional flooding becomes a hazard and the beach can struggle to keep pace with sea level rise. 

Left as it is today, stormwater will continue to cause major flooding behind the road and overtopping waves will continue eroding the road and seawall. This will cost tax-payers money and cut off emergency services. Hendricks could also lose a significant portion of its beach area.  

Southporters will soon be asked to vote on whether the town should raise the road and the seawall by two feet, replace the seawall storm drain with a 12-ft culvert, and remove fill from the floodplain marsh upland of the beach.  

This vote comes about a year earlier than anticipated because Southport was awarded $1,165,000 in conditional federal funding at the request of Sen. Susan Collins. The condition is that the town vote within two months on whether to pursue the project. 

So – why this design, what will it look like, and what will it cost the town?  

After considering four alternatives, the Selectboard chose this 12-foot wide, 6-foot tall culvert because it will dissipate wave energy and allow water to pass under the road instead of over it. The wider the culvert, the more slowly and easily the water can flow and drain which reduces erosion and flooding. About half of the culvert’s height would be below the beach surface, so the top of it would only be about waist high.  The seawall would be constructed of stacked natural rock. For a full look at the alternatives analysis, I encourage you to read it at https://bit.ly/HH-alternatives. At the end of the day, this design saved the town the most money over time and provided the best protection per dollar spent. 

Doing nothing might cost less now, but not long-term. If we take a conservative estimate and speculate that damage from storms as intense as January 2024 will only happen every 15 years and inflation won’t go over 3.5% (it already has), within 75 years Southport will have spent at least $1,815,000 on repairs at Hendricks.  

So, what would Southporters need to pay if it votes to accept the federal money? If Southport receives the additional funds requested in May from the Maine Infrastructure Adaptation Fund (MIAF), we would need to pay match funding of approximately $29,000. However, because Congress will not award the $1,165,000 federal grant unless Southport demonstrates that it is prepared to cover at least 25% of the total project cost within the next month, the Town must vote based on the worst-case scenario. Under that scenario, Southport's maximum obligation would be approximately$292,000.  

Let’s put that $292,000 number into perspective. That is roughly equivalent to the cost of repairing damage from only four or five more major storms. For one year only, Southport would likely need to raise the mil tax rate by 32 cents. So, if your home is valued at $700,000 that would mean your investment in long-term infrastructure resilience at the public beach would be a one-time cost of $224. 

Hendricks Head provides all Southporters with a sense of place. A beach to grow up with, an ocean to love, and a town to be proud of.   

Vote yes on July 1. 

If you would like to talk to Devin about the Hendricks Head Beach Restoration Project or anything you read in this opinion, she would love to talk at devindomeyer@gmail.com. A public informational meeting on this project will be held on June 25 from 6 to 7 p.m. at the Southport Town Hall.