People observe the waves from a seawall in Camp Ellis on Saturday, Sep. 16. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer
SACO — For years, the Saco community has watched helplessly as storms and ocean waves eat up the shoreline at Camp Ellis — but the tide may be turning.
On Monday, Nov. 27, the Saco City Council voted unanimously in favor of a project partnership agreement that would see the federal Army Corps of Engineers construct a 750-foot stone spur jetty at Camp Ellis, which sits at the mouth of the Saco River. The Army Corps would also replenish the beach with sand as part of the agreement.
Saco officials are now waiting for the Army Corps to return a copy of the project partnership agreement that will be signed by the city, according to David Plavin, the vice president of the coastline preservation group Save Our Shores (SOS) Saco Bay.
The group has been one of the loudest voices calling for a solution to shoreline erosion at Camp Ellis and a stakeholder in seeing the agreement to fruition.
The damage to the shore is in large part attributed to a jetty constructed there by the Army Corps in the 19th century. The jetty modifies how the waves hit the shore and sand flows from the Saco River, robbing the beach of its natural form of sand replenishment. A spur jetty would sit affixed to the existing jetty, forming a T, to diminish the power of the waves.
“Over 300 feet of beach have been lost and what remains of Camp Ellis Beach is nothing more than a crescent,” according to a press release from SOS Saco Bay on Nov. 28.
After the City Council’s vote, SOS Saco Bay took to Facebook and cheered the move, writing “we are in new territory and with everyone working together, the light at the end of the tunnel suddenly gets brighter.”
The project is authorized under Section 111 of the 1968 River and Harbor Act, which gives the Army Corps the power to mitigate and prevent damage caused by federal navigation work. A Section 111 project needs a non-federal sponsor. Saco will serve as that non-federal sponsor as part of the project partnership agreement.
A project to construct a spur jetty has been in the works at least since 2007. That year, following the devastating so-called “Patriots Day” storm, U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, spoke in favor of Congress earmarking nearly $26.9 million in funding towards such a project on the Senate floor.
“The jetty has served its important navigational purpose well over the 100-plus years of its existence, but now it is time for the federal government to make good on its obligation to help those people who have been harmed by the structure the federal government built in the first place,” Collins said in 2007.
And while that money was authorized, it was never appropriated, according to later reporting from the Portland Press Herald.
This current effort has even more financial backing from the federal government. In 2022, Collins was able to secure $45 million as part of the Water Resource Development Act for it. The WRDA is a part of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act.
In an interview in September, Plavin said, that constructing a spur jetty was not the only potential solution to the erosion, or even necessarily the solution preferred by SOS Saco Bay.
Scientists, for their part, have said that a spur jetty would likely just slow erosion, not stop it. The group was interested in using wave attenuation devices, structures typically made out of concrete that are inserted into the water to diminish the power of waves. But SOS Saco Bay felt compelled to throw their weight behind the Army Corps agreement in order to take advantage of the $45 million in federal money.
“We will ultimately do whatever, whatever we can do,” Plavin said in September.
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