The town of St. George, like many communities along Maine’s coast, has lost much of its working space for fishing and other water-dependent industries. Its once-thriving seafood processing factories have closed, and the number of working docks has fallen from six to two.
But now, the midcoast town is close to finishing a nearly-decade long project that should help to preserve what remains of the town’s accessible waterfront. It has been expanding and improving the public landing in the village of Port Clyde that has been in use since the 1960s. When the project is done — likely in June — it will nearly double the existing wharf space and give the landing an expected lifespan of 75 years.
It’s an example of how one coastal town is responding to a variety of challenges that have gradually cut off access to the coast in Maine’s working fishing communities. While the state has thousands of miles of coastline, just 20 miles of working waterfront remained on it by 2006, according to an often-cited study by the Island Institute.
Among the challenges to working waterfronts are rising business expenses and increased competition from the developers of coastal homes. Climate-fueled weather swings are also a big threat, as the twin storms in early January demonstrated when they destroyed wharfs and fishing equipment all along the coast and left many Maine fishermen struggling to rebuild.
Port Clyde also had some bad luck last September when it suffered serious damage from a fire that burned down several businesses integral to the town’s economy. St. George Town Manager Rick Erb said it will take the town two years to rebuild from the burn.
Meanwhile, the new landing that’s being constructed will help act as a bulwark against those ongoing threats, according to Erb.
It will increase the number of docks and ramps in the town. Its engineers are also taking climate change into account, raising the new wharf three feet above projected sea level rise to escape higher tides and waves that can batter the coast during heavy storms, according to Erb. And, the bearing capacity on the new landing will allow it to be raised even higher in the future if needed.
“It will … ensure that people, whether they are fishermen or recreational boaters, have access to the waterfront,” he said.
The idea for the Port Clyde Landing project came almost a decade ago, in 2015, when St. George purchased the land adjacent to its original town landing out of recognition that waterfront property was getting more scarce, Erb said. In 2018, residents voted to allot $2.6 million for the project, but as construction costs skyrocketed, the town had to look for additional funding.
It applied for a grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration, and was granted around $4 million by 2020 to get started on the project, Erb said. The plan is to connect the new landing to the existing landing while also adding 40 parking spaces and public infrastructure such as benches and walkways.
The town took all those measures to proactively protect its remaining public waterfront. While St. George has 125 miles of coastline, less than 200 feet of it is public, according to Dan Morris, a lobsterman who chairs the town’s Harbor Committee.
Morris, who grew up in a fishing family with deep roots in St. George, said that he’s witnessed the dwindling of local working waterfront during his lifetime. While the new landing will not have many of the fishing-specific amenities that the town’s lobstering co-op does, Morris still thinks that the additional waterfront space will help bring back more fishermen.
“If we build it, they’ll come,” Morris said.
Morris also hopes the landing will increase the town’s tourism capacity with more parking and the ability for people to dock their boats and come visit the businesses. With the landing opening as tourism season begins in the summer, the timing is perfect, he said.
“The point of it is, this is public access that will never go away,” Morris said. “There should be a place the fishermen can always call home.”