On February 2, Gouldsboro submitted a proposal to the Maine Department of Transportation (MDOT), asking them to support a feasibility study of alternatives to the current situation along Corea Road at Sand Cove. The photo at the top of this post shows what the road looked like 26 minutes after high tide on January 10. Gouldsboro wants to reduce the risk of a storm making this road too dangerous for driving. If the road becomes impassable, everyone on the Corea Peninsula will be cut off from emergency services. If we lost the road, as happened in Birch Harbor in June of 2021, movement of the more than $200,000 of lobster, fuel, and bait that moves to and from the Corea CoOP each week would stop.
Gouldsboro is asking for approximately $50,000 that it will use to pay for engineering expertise necessary to develop and explore alternatives, including alternatives that would reroute the road so that it is farther from the ocean, running up behind Acadia Oceanside Meadows Inn. Inn owners Ben Walter and Sonja Sundaram support the proposal. The goal of the work is to understand what feasible alternatives are available and to develop estimates of cost and difficulty that will enable the Town and MDOT to make decisions about how to make the road more resistant to flooding and destruction. Since the Sand Cove portion of Corea Road is part of State Route 195, the final decision about what to do and how to pay for it will be up to MDOT.
The Vulnerability Assessment and Action Plan for Gouldsboro that FB Environmental delivered in October 2022 listed Corea Road at Sand Cove among the highest priority issues for the Town to address in response to sea level rise and storm surges because of the risk of cutting hundreds of households off from emergency services. Gouldsboro’s Coastal Resilience Committee prepared the proposal with assistance from FB Environmental Associates and Streamworks PLLC.
— END —
Bill – what will this mean to us who live just past Sand Beach going towards Corea? Will the road that is there now(Rt 195) still be a road going to Corea?
Stan — Thanks for the question. The proposed study’s purpose is to ensure that everyone can get back and forth between Corea and the rest of Gouldsboro regardless of weather conditions. So, yes, absolutely, Rt 195 will still go to Corea in all of the options that are explored.
What the Town is asking for is a study of options that will make the road more resistant to flooding and damage. One option, for sure, will be to explore ways to improve the road in its current location. But the idea is to also find out whether it would be possible to move Rt 195 a bit inland and whether that would be an improvement.
The proposal includes plans for numerous meetings with stakeholders to identify the pros and cons of the alternatives that emerge. And, if we are fortunate enough to get funding and proceed with the work, the end product will be engineering studies and input from stakeholders recommending a preferred alternative — whatever it turns out to be — to the Maine Department of Transportation. Since it is a state highway, ultimately MDOT will decide how to proceed, if at all.
We hope to hear whether the Town will receive funding for this study sometime in the next few weeks.