SACO — The city is looking to form a partnership with its neighbors and the state and to re-start a conversation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as it contemplates both long- and short-term solutions to the erosion in Saco Bay.

While the situation at Camp Ellis is perhaps the most visible and dramatic as to what happens as the result of erosion, it isn’t the only area where it happens.

There are issues in Biddeford, Old Orchard Beach and Scarborough — and in other areas of Saco, state and local officials say.

In Saco, the erosion is creeping north, to Ferry Beach State Park.

“You’re losing five feet a year at the state park,” Marine Geologist Peter Slovinsky of the Maine Geological Survey told stakeholders at a meeting in Saco on Monday morning.

That session brought state legislators, city leaders, those with organizations like SOS Saco Bay, representatives of the state Department of Environmental Protection and the Maine Geological Survey together to discuss the situation and possible next steps.

Rick Millard of the Saco Shoreline Commission said 67 feet of beach has been lost from 2003 to 2019. From 1960 to 2020, there have been 38 homes lost, he said.

Millard estimated that by 2039, the erosion will have moved as far as the Old Orchard Beach Pier.

“The communities are all suffering common damages,” said Milliard, including eroded beaches, eroded home values and a resulting decrease in tax revenue.

Saco Public Works Director Patrick Fox told the group that two-thirds of the 68,000 cubic yards of sand taken from a recent dredge and placed north of the Camp Ellis jetty is already gone — during one of the most storm free (to date) winters in recent memory.

Saco is hoping to move forward with a whole bay coalition that includes Biddeford, Old Orchard Beach and Scarborough, as well as consider other steps that can be taken to fend off more erosion.

And city officials hopes to revive talks with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which had proposed a spur addition to the Camp Ellis jetty.

As the group began talking about ways to help ease the problem, Slovinsky recalled a 2009 project that saw restoration of the sand dunes.

“We never thought it would last 11 years,” said Slovinsky. The sand in which to plant dune grass was trucked in and volunteers did the work.

He also pointed out that dredge projects happen more often in Scarborough than in Saco, and that perhaps some of the dredged material could be brought to Saco.

Although two-thirds of the Saco dredged material is now gone, while it was in place there was less splash over, Millard noted.

Saco Mayor William Doyle suggested the city and the other communities take another look at a regional dredge program, based on one in place on Cape Cod, proposed a couple of years ago by the Southern Maine Planning and Development Commission.

In the meantime, the city will look at hosting a regional meeting sometime in March, and also hopes to attend a session on dredging.

The Feb. 24 session was hosted by Sen, Justin Chenette, Rep. Donna Bailey and Rep. Lori Gramlich, who sponsored L.D. 774, which is designed to help protect Maine’s beaches and shoreline. That bill, which the environmental committee recently passed, is now poised to go to the Maine House and Senate.

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