In the first of the back-to-back storms that rocked Maine’s coast early this year, employees of the Wiscasset wastewater treatment plant watched as the high tide lapped at the edges of its tanks, which sit on a small island in the Sheepscot River.
Fearing the next storm’s even higher tides would flood the facility and compromise its essential microorganisms, the town’s public works department built a berm around the wastewater treatment facility in a day.
Though the plant avoided flooding in that case, the January storms were a wake-up call for the town, according to wastewater treatment plant superintendent Robert Lalli. More than 30 years after it was built, the facility has to move.
“The super tides, I think, emphasized in the citizens’ minds, ‘Hey, you guys really are on an island down there, and you really do have to move,’” Lalli said.
Rising tides and aging wastewater treatment facilities are not unique to Wiscasset. In fact, several facilities on Maine’s coast are facing a similar choice: move, upgrade or flood.
Wastewater treatment plants around the state are vulnerable, including at least six that will be at risk of permanent flooding due to sea level rise by 2050, according to Maine’s 2020 climate action plan.
One of these facilities, in Saco, broke ground on its new wastewater treatment plant this summer, which will be elevated to escape sea level rise. Portland is installing four underground tanks that will keep its facility from backing up and sending untreated wastewater into the ocean. Bangor has made major improvements to its system over the last few years.
And the city of Bath is accounting for rising seas as it upgrades its pump stations and other infrastructure, said wastewater superintendent Bryan Levitt.
It’s not cheap. Maine’s climate action plan estimated the cost of replacing low-lying facilities could reach up to $93 million. Lalli estimated that moving Wiscasset’s wastewater treatment plant to another potential location in town — the current public works site — and related work such as demolishing the old plant could top $50 million. Wiscasset residents will vote in November on whether to use the new site.
Residents of Bath approved a $25 million bond last year to upgrade their own aging system, with work that will include separating the stormwater and sewer systems and upgrading the pump stations, some of which were also at risk of flooding during the January storms, Levitt said.
Municipalities continue to request state funding for wastewater facilities through the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, which was created as a part of the federal Clean Water Act. But as requests climb, the aid provided through the fund has decreased in recent years.
In 2021, 51 applicants requested a total of $235 million, and the state awarded $113 million. But this year, the state was only able to award $67 million, despite getting 66 applications requesting a total of $392 million.
A Maine Department of Environmental Protection official who oversees that fund did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Wiscasset has put a hold on seeking funding for its project until voters approve the new site, Lalli said. If they vote it down, the town will have to search for a new location.
“A lot of things are in flux,” he said.
For now, though, the berm constructed in January stays in the case of another storm.
Levitt said Bath has portable generators to keep its facilities and pump stations running during storms and is considering investigating whether sea level rise could back up its piping system.
“You throw climate change on top of this, and that alone is this huge problem that, you know, it’s difficult to find a solution for,” Levitt said.
