When state officials created a climate council in 2019, it was to investigate how global warming was affecting Maine and what could be done to lessen those impacts.
Much of the council’s work since then has focused on Maine’s energy and transportation needs, promoting a reduction in the use of the fossil fuels that are accelerating climate change.
But over the past two years, and in particular this past winter, the impact of climate-driven storms has become much clearer. Since December, storms have flooded significant portions of inland Maine and wreaked havoc along the coast, destroying docks, damaging homes and wiping out protective sand dunes.
That urgency is why Gov. Janet Mills created a new entity on Tuesday specifically to look into how to make infrastructure less vulnerable to storms, which are getting stronger as a result of climate change.
“The climate council is a much broader entity,” Mills said in Stonington, which was hit hard by back-to-back storms in January. The new panel, called the Maine Infrastructure Rebuilding and Resilience Commission, will consist of 24 people charged with providing recommendations to Mills within a year.
Mills said the commission will include representation that the climate council doesn’t have. It will have members with direct experience in engineering, the insurance industry and the financing and planning of infrastructure. It will also have representatives from Maine electric utilities and the building trades.
“It will identify near-term investments and policy needs,” said Mills. “It will develop the state’s first long-term infrastructure plan by next May.”
This spring, at Mills’ urging, the Legislature authorized $60 million for repairing damage from storms in December and January. Of that amount, $25 million will go to transportation projects aimed at repairing and improving roadside drainage, $25 million will go toward upgrading damaged working waterfront properties, and $10 million will go to businesses impacted by the storms.
Mills said she is not sure what kind of recommendations the commission will make, or whether lawmakers will need to sign off on them.
“I’m not sure it will require legislation,” Mills said. “We don’t know yet. We’ll see what they find out.”
Mills signed the order creating the commission on Tuesday while standing by a pier owned by the Stonington Lobster Co-op that was wiped out when storm surge and heavy waves in January flooded the end of Atlantic Avenue.
Severe flooding in the storms damaged multiple working waterfront properties in Stonington and elsewhere along the coast. Maine’s $600 million fishing industry is heavily reliant on such properties, which are expected to face repeat storms in coming winters.
Linda Nelson, Stonington’s economic and community development director and co-chair of the commission, said the town has been working on improving its climate resilience for several years, but this past winter demonstrated it’s still not prepared for what’s coming.
“We got hit hard. We were working on it. We had money,” Nelson said. “This commission, if it does anything, hopefully will put speed in our process, because the climate is moving faster than any of us are. We’re behind.”
