At the mouth of every river on the planet, there is a delta. The largest manmade environmental disaster in the state of Maine is taking place in Camp Ellis/Ferry Beach.

Camp Ellis/Ferry Beach has been disappearing for over 100 years. The slow destruction of miles of Maine shoreline has been, and continues to be, caused by the construction of a jetty at the mouth of the Saco River by the Army Corps of Engineers

In a prolonged period of fiscal austerity, such as we are living in now, where municipal governments are struggling to deal with underfunded pension and health care liabilities, one would think it would be easy to convince the local and state governments to protect and prolong a shoreline that would have generated millions in property taxes.

The construction of the jetty was a federal undertaking. Shouldn’t the correction of that mistake also fall to the federal government?

Not only has the mistake not been corrected, but the federal government has not compensated the local government, which has lost millions and millions in forgone real estate tax revenue over the last hundred years.

This is a time for leadership, not talking points and photo ops. Maine was once represented by leaders with true Yankee grit; evidently those people have washed away just like the shoreline in Camp Ellis/Ferry Beach.

Thirty years and millions of dollars in Department of Environmental Protection and Section 111 studies later, and yet the shore continues to erode.

We started SOS (Save Our Shores) in 1985 in an effort to shed light on the ongoing beach erosion and ask our government to be accountable.

For over 30 years, we’ve been asking for someone to help save our habitat. When is long enough … long enough?

Steve Coravos

Saco

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