Coastal Projects & Planning

The Lincoln County Regional Planning Commission is dedicated to the conservation, restoration, and responsible use of Lincoln County’s coastal resources.

SEA LEVEL RISE & COASTAL HAZARD

The LCRPC Board began discussing in the summer of 2011 a project to evaluate the potential impacts of rising sea levels on Lincoln County’s 450 miles of tidal coastline.  Over the past 100 years, sea level along the county’s coastline has increased about a half-foot and many scientists are predicting that it may rise another two feet or more in the next 100 years.  The average town size in Lincoln County is about 1,800 persons and the biggest investment each of these communities has is public infrastructure, such as roads, fire stations, sewage treatment plants, municipal piers and schools and other facilities.  The Board applied for and received a grant from the Maine Coastal Program to conduct a sea level rise-coastal hazards study of the county’s coastal areas. The project has three main goals:

• Develop a more accurate highest annual tide and examine the impact of sea level rise scenarios on it. The highest annual tide represents static inundation and a better understanding of the limit of the highest annual tide could allow communities in the county to identify at-risk areas that might require more protection. The project will apply three different sea level rise scenarios (2’, 3.3’ and 6’ increase in sea level) to the highest annual tide to examine impacts.

• Examine the impact of sea level rise on the February 1978 storm of record, which is considered to be a 100-year storm event.  The historic high water level from the 1978 storm will be applied to each of the 17 tidal gauges in Lincoln County to develop still water levels, which are best for enclosed areas vs. open coast. The three sea level rise scenarios will then be applied to examine impacts. While this will not take wave action into consideration, which is applicable to the open coast, it does include the limited storm surge of 3.5’ from the 1978 storm, which is statistically projected to occur once every 14 years.

• Use these analyses to develop impact data on buildings, roads, bridges and key public facilities.  The project will also look at impacts under SLOSH (Hurricane CAT 1 and CAT 2) scenarios, but not added sea level rise, to identify existing buildings and infrastructure at risk.

Lincoln_County_Sea_Leve_Rise-Coastal_Hazard_Study, July 2012

 LINCOLN COUNTY TIDAL MARSHES

The Maine Natural Areas Program (www.maine.gov/doc/nrimc/mnap/) maintains a data base on tidal marshes in all coastal areas of the state including Lincoln County. The following are tidal marsh maps for Lincoln County and for individual county communities with tidal marshes. Please note that the maps only include vegetated tidal marshes of at least 5 acres in size unless a marsh of less than 5 acres was in a cove or embayment with other larger marshes, in which case it is included on the maps. Mud flats or fringing marshes, which are defined as linear segments of marshes with a width of less than 60 feet, are not included.

Boothbay
Bremen
Edgecomb
Newcastle
Nobleboro
Waldoboro
Westport
Wiscasset

Download tidal marsh files as .kmls (Google Earth) in a zip file here.

For more information, please contact County Planner Robert Faunce at rfaunce@lcrpc.org.