Working Waterfront

The great storms brought great reckoning

Lots of us, I learned conversing a day later with friends, woke up around 4:30 on the morning of the great storm, hearing the wind slam around our houses, feeling our sound old homes vibrate with its ferocity. Wind-whipped electrical wires attached to the house adjacent to my bedroom added… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Human loss and devastating damage

On Jan. 5, five days before a storm would wreak havoc along the Maine coast, the town of Cranberry Isles suffered the unexpected death of one of its citizens. Cory Alley collapsed in his skiff on the way out to his mooring. As his wife, Cari, and their youngest son… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Vinalhaven’s watery dilemma is not new

On Feb. 9, 1895, 130 years before this January's devastating storm, the Secretary of War submitted to Congress a plan for constructing a breakwater from Lane’s Island—connected to Vinalhaven by a bridge—to Green Ledge to the west, a distance of more than a quarter mile. The plan was submitted in… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

What will we do with the water?

The ocean is knocking at our door. Since the torrential, monsoon-like rain in October, the island has been battered by four additional significant storms. In January, a devastating combination of wind and tide laid waste to Brown’s Boatyard, and took out boathouses, fish houses, docks, and piers. The next storm… SEE MORE

Islesboro's Grindle Point Lighthouse was underwater during the Jan. 10 storm.

Working Waterfront

Maine’s lighthouses face troubling recovery

Back-to-back storms slammed into the coast of Maine on Jan. 10 and Jan. 13, breaking state records for the highest tides since 1978 and delivering extensive damage along the entire coastline. Though final tallies are not in, statewide damages to public infrastructure —things like piers, roads, and bridges—are estimated at… SEE MORE

A beaver in the wetlands it created. PHOTO: COURTESY ACADIA NATIONAL PARK

Working Waterfront

Beavers helping create wetlands in Acadia

To a beaver, the flow emanating from a culvert is a “leak” in the water-retaining complex of dams and channels that must be repaired. SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Down the drain, and then what?

After the weather Maine experienced in December and January, even the staunchest climate change skeptic had to admit that something is up. Three powerful storms—a rainstorm in December and two coastal windstorms in January—roared through the state. Several factors, other than their arrival in rapid succession, made those winter storms… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Offshore wind threatens centuries of fishing

The New England electric grid—ISO New England—has a website that includes a display featuring two pie charts that show where our electricity is coming from, updated in real time. Right now, “renewables” are at 7% of our total energy mix. Wind is 28% of that 7%, solar is 10% of… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Newfoundland, Maine share maritime past

Today’s Newfoundland seems prosperous in comparison to Maine. There are no mobile homes and every house, every shed, and even every doghouse is clad in vinyl siding. SEE MORE

A man walks away from the storm-damaged Rockland waterfront on Jan. 9. PHOTO: JACK SULLIVAN

Working Waterfront

Waterfront access jeopardized by storms

The challenges of maintaining working waterfront access was the topic of a discussion at the Maine Fishermen’s Forum on March 2, scheduled well before the January storms that pummeled the Maine coast. And that was appropriate, given the shrinking footprint the marine economy faces. But a panel discussion on the… SEE MORE