BATH
“We’re here why?” asked Bath City Planner Andrew Deci. “Because water is an increasing problem in Bath.”
“Flooding hurts our community,” Deci told the audience gathered at Maine Maritime Museum for the Kennebec Estuary Land Trust annual lecture, focused on how sea level rise and flooding could impact the city. “It costs us money, it costs us time, it gets in the way of development (and) increasing our tax base.”
In fact, Deci said, it is the No. 1 technical development problem when the city sees new development or redevelopment in the community: “How much water is going where? Should we be putting a building where that is because water might be increasing? And unfortunately, solutions cost money. Pump stations are multiple millions of dollars. Enhancing our waste water treatment plant to take care of additional rainfall costs $20 (million) to $30 million,” which are costs the city should be spending on other things. “We have old, ancient infrastructure that needs to be replaced.”
Also speaking was Peter Slovinsky, a marine geologist with the Maine Geological Survey, who showed charts and graphs on sea level rise trends, storm surge, tidal elevations, flood frequency and potential hurricane inundation.
For a number of years his office and the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry’s Municipal Planning Assistance Program and Maine Coast Heritage Trust have been working with Phippsburg, Bath, Bowdoinham, Topsham and Georgetown on the Marsh Migration Project. The overall project goals were to increase awareness about sea level and storm surge at the municipal level; to map marsh migration as well as storm surge and sea level inundation scenarios; and to “have locallydriven adaptation strategies being developed as a result of the project,” Slovinsky said.
“What we’re seeing now are sea level changes being driven by thermal expansion — so you’re actually warming up the water — in response to climate change,” Slovinsky said. “And the second thing is volumetric increase input from landbased ice sheets and glaciers.”
Latest scientific predictions put sea level rise at 1 foot by 2050; and 2- to 4- feet by 2100 and possibly more according to data Slovinsky provided. Maine is looking at 2 feet by 2100 for areas with regulated coastal sand dunes. Sea level rise increases the frequency and duration of annual tidal and storm-driven flood events.
Looking at Bath, Slovinsky said wetlands have few areas to expand and that some areas may require tidal restriction restoration. Sea level rise and storm events, he said, will likely impact roads, buildings and critical infrastructure in the city. Buildings most at-risk are in the downtown and on Washington Street.
Popular now is “green” infrastructure, said presenter Joseph McLean of the Topsham-based civil engineering firm Wright Pierce.
Reviewing the hydrologic cycle — water going from our oceans into the atmosphere coming back down to the land and running off back into the ocean — what we don’t see is the infiltration into the ground of water moving back into ponds, springs and streams and back down to the ocean, McLean said. In this process you are slowing filling a reservoir of ground water, building and slowly releasing overtime — allowing it to cool and filter.
“What we’ve been doing is really seriously disrupting this cycle,” McLean said. “We’ve been building a lot of things that don’t allow water to get into the ground,” from pavement to roofs. More water runoff is going directly into streams, moving faster, picking up contaminants and eroding.
Green infrastructure tries to replicate the natural hydrological process. There are many options and levels of green infrastructure — from porous pavement and pavers, to bio-retention systems, and using vegetation as natural filtration.
The city needs sustainable solutions, Deci said. He pointed to flooding issues in the Willow Street and Pine Hill neighborhoods, where the infrastructure is not adequate, “and we’re looking for solutions that incorporate new technologies,” that encompass new old ideas, such as “green” technologies.
The city landed a highly competitive grant through the Environmental Protection Agency to assist the city in finding out if green infrastructure can help solve those flooding issues in the Willow Street area, said Deci, “and transfer that information to other areas of our community.”
The city is looking to incorporate green infrastructure components into the redesign of the Route 1 viaduct under way by the Maine Department of Transportation; and how it can remove impervious surfaces so that less water is flowing into the combined sewer systems and into the waste water treatment plant.
From Monday to Wednesday, Nov. 3-5, Bath will host a team of professionals from across the country, through the American Institute of Architects. The team will help the city look at its downtown in particular, and how it can be a better place, more resilient to issues like sea level rise and increased rainfall, while retaining its downtown character.
Deci invited all to participate in that process, which starts with a community discussion forum Monday at 6:30 p.m. at Winter Street Center at 880 Washington St. The AIA’s Design and Resiliency Team will take all it hears from that charrettestyle meeting and present back to the community Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. at Winter Street Center.
dmoore@timesrecord.com
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