BIDDEFORD — A property owner in Biddeford, is working to change Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) regulations in the wake of two powerful storms that caused extensive private and public damage along coastal Maine in early January.
Christopher Grandpre who lives in Richmond, Virginia, owns two adjacent lots on Seventh Street in Biddeford Pool, where the stretch of beach near South Point begins.
Grandpre estimates that he lost roughly 60 feet of dune on his property during the two January storms, one on Jan. 10 and the second of on Jan. 13.
He said that DEP granted him permits to build on the property, but did not grant him a permit to use “gray” or “hard” stabilization — anti-erosion tactics that rely on hard materials like stone and walls to prevent erosion.
“We applied for a DEP permit last year to both restore the dune after erosion in a January 2023 storm and to stabilize it with riprap, but we were denied a permit under the current regulations,” Grandpre wrote via email to the Biddeford Courier on Jan. 23.
According to DEP Deputy Commissioner David Madore, the agency prohibits the construction of seawalls on frontal sand dunes, citing ecological concerns. A riprap, stones placed along a shoreline to protect property from shoreline erosion, are included in the department’s definition of seawalls.
Madore pointed to a section of a DEP regulation that reads: “Seawalls reflect waves onto the beach causing sand to be scoured away and they cut off the natural supply of sand to the beach from the sand dune behind the wall.”
Scoured away sand can cause deeper water in front of the seawall, leading to more powerful waves. Walls also cause more severe erosion wherever they end, experts say.
Refraining from using gray stabilization will cause the dunes to erode and be washed away, Grandpre said ,which “seems like a worse environmental and ecological outcome.”
DEP instead allows replenishing the dunes with sand — something Grandpre has already done and will do again after these storms — but the constant renourishing of the beach is “simply not economically viable,” he said.
The agency also encourages “green” or “living” shoreline stabilization, which includes using biodegradable material and plants in order to prevent erosion.
The department has seen several successful living shoreline projects in recent years, Madore said, though experts who spoke with the Maine Monitor in 2023 said that Maine’s tides and strong winds make it harder to effectively implement those solutions without them being swept away — as compared to other coastal locations like Maryland and North Carolina.
But techniques like seawalls aren’t impervious to storms and tides, either, marine geologist Peter Slovinsky told the Maine Monitor.
The storms in January are a testament to that; seawalls up and down the coast sustained damage, causing steep costs for residents.
At a public information session held on Jan. 20 in Biddeford for residents impacted by the storms, Ward 1 City Councilor William Emhiser estimated the damage in his ward alone was multiple millions of dollars. Attendees at the session spoke about damaged seawalls, debris and erosion.
“After comparatively minor erosion in January 2023, we were quoted approximately $50K,” said Grandpre of the cost of the damage to his properties. “The erosion suffered in the January 2024 storms is dramatically more extensive so I can only guess the dune restoration cost will be exponentially higher.”
At the Jan. 20 meeting, Grandpre spoke about a nascent effort to change DEP regulations, which must be done through the State Legislature.
“We’ve also launched an effort through a law firm in town to try to get the regulations that DEP is charged with enforcing changed, so that hardened stabilization would be permitted to be placed in front of a dune to protect the dune and the property,” he said.
Another Biddeford Pool homeowner, Thomas Lewry, echoed Grandpre’s complaint about existing regulations.
“What bothers me most is the disconnect between the city’s cooperation and encouragement for the development properties, in many cases on Seventh Street … but to then have another regulatory authority say, ‘now that you’ve made this investment, you’re not permitted to protect it.’ It just doesn’t make sense,” Lewry said.
Grandpre has engaged the help of Archipelago Law, a firm in Portland, to brainstorm what the proposed legislation would look like. In addition to work on the legal side, Grandpre is working to find other homeowners who are interested in joining the effort, right now mostly by word of mouth.
Madore on behalf of the DEP did not comment on whether the agency would support the proposed regulatory change.
At the meeting, Grandpre urged the city to support the effort insofar as they are able and asked any residents who are interested in joining the effort to do so. About 25 people attended the afternoon session, which was geared toward residents in the Biddeford Pool neighborhood.
The city held three other sessions for coastal communities in Biddeford that day.
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