Gouldsboro has received a Community Action Grant from the Maine Office of Community Affairs (MOCA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that will enable it to move to the next stages of planning and design work for a launch ramp in Prospect Harbor and restoring and reworking the breakwater and pier in South Gouldsboro.
What the New Grant Will Make Possible
The new Community Action Grant will enable Gouldsboro’s Coastal Resilience Committee (CRC) to advance the priorities identified by fishermen and others for Prospect Harbor and South Gouldsboro during meetings last year. Briefly, participants in last year’s meeting said that:
- Building a public launch ramp in Prospect Harbor would be the best investment the town could make to support expanding the harbor’s capacity while reducing the risk of damage from unusually large storms.
- Restoring the breakwater in South Gouldsboro Harbor so that trucks can back onto it safely, and it can once again support a pier and hoist, will enable South Gouldsboro to support an active commercial fishery while also meeting the needs of recreational boaters.
As 2025 drew to a close, the town knew what it wanted to do in Prospect Harbor and South Gouldsboro, but had only sketches and broad design concepts to work with. This new funding will enable us to:
- Undertake site investigations to develop a detailed understanding of what will be involved in work at each location.
- Draw on the site investigations to develop much more detailed conceptual designs, getting as close as we can to permit-ready designs.
- Consider design alternatives in response to what we learn in the site investigations.
- To the extent possible (we do not yet know enough about the challenges and constraints at each site to be sure of what is possible), start preliminary permitting work.
As in all the work that Gouldsboro and its CRC have done so far, the project will include substantial opportunities for public engagement. We will organize an intensive, collaborative design and planning workshop, likely late next spring, where design professionals, engineers, and stakeholders will work together to resolve design issues and move toward final plans.
This project will not involve construction, but will put us in a position to seek the funding necessary to complete construction.
The $79,540 contract will support work through May 31, 2028 if necessary, but the CRC’s current plans anticipate that all work will be complete by the end of 2027.
How We Got Here
In May of last year, the CRC met with fishermen, residents, and other stakeholders in Prospect Harbor, South Gouldsboro, and Bunkers Harbor to identify the highest-priority improvements and investments the town should make in its town-owned harbor infrastructure in each harbor. An earlier post on this site describes that meeting’s outcomes in detail. Here is a quick summary:
- Prospect Harbor: The highest-priority need was the construction of a launch ramp so that fishermen could haul out boats in advance of particularly large storms, such as the one that put lobster boats up on the shore and rocks in January 2024. Fishermen said having a launch ramp would be a “game changer.”
- South Gouldsboro: The breakwater just south of South Gouldsboro’s launch ramp once also served as a pier, enabling fishermen to load bait and fuel and offload their catch. Erosion from daily tidal activity and storms have eroded the breakwater so that it is no longer safe to back a truck onto it. The town owns the breakwater and fenced it off a few years ago. The fishermen and other harbor users identified repair of the breakwater and returning it to operation as a pier as the highest priority.
- Bunkers Harbor: Here, the highest priority is dredging the harbor. The Harbor Master has gotten in touch with the Army Corps of Engineers to see about moving it up on their schedule.
November 15 Meeting Outcomes
Over the summer, project consultants at FB Environmental, working with engineers, gathered information about the geography, property boundaries, and other characteristics of the Prospect Harbor and South Gouldsboro sites. Using this information, they created conceptual designs and identified focus questions that fishermen and other harbor users and stakeholders explored during a meeting in mid-November.
Prospect Harbor
The CRC presented three design concepts to the group working with the design options for the Prospect Harbor launch ramp. The image below shows the orthographic photo produced using the town’s drone, along with the options the group considered.
The group began the discussion by focusing on Option 3, since it was the idea that emerged from the May meeting. The conversation quickly turned to identifying the disadvantages of this option. The most significant disadvantages were:
- At this location, the launch ramp’s slope would be relatively shallow at 4%, well below the recommended 12%. The problem with a shallow slope is that the trailer and truck used to launch or haul the boat need to back more deeply into the water to float the boat.
- The top of the ramp is very close to the highway at the entrance to Bold Coast Seafood’s facility. Consequently, use of the ramp would interfere with truck traffic entering and exiting the plant. One of the representatives from Bold Coast said that the Maine Department of Transportation has met with Bold Coast to express concerns about congestion in that area, noting, “With tractor-trailer trucks coming in and out, we have to keep the lower side open.”
Other concerns related to Option 3 included the possibility that this ramp location might interfere with fishermen’s use of the area to beach their boats at low tide for repairs and routine maintenance. Another concern was the possibility of damage to the water line that supplies fresh water to the Bold Coast facility for seafood processing.
The group also identified a few positives about this option, noting that bringing a boat to the bottom of the ramp would be easy.
A New Option Emerges
About 15 minutes into the conversation about Option 3, while the group was discussing the potential fill area noted in the drone photo, one of the participants suggested a new location and orientation for the ramp, angling it away from the town pier as illustrated in the photo below. This new option quickly emerged as the group’s preferred option because it addressed the problems associated with Option 3 without creating new ones. The new option’s advantages included:
- A slope greater than 12%, similar to the slope for Options 2 and 3.
- Easy entrance to the ramp from the water.
- Easy truck and trailer access to the top of the ramp if a retaining wall and fill were placed in the potential fill area.
- Minimal loss of parking spaces.
- No interference with Bold Coast Seafood’s truck traffic,
- No interference with Bold Coast Seafood’s freshwater inlet pipe.
Participants also noted that the angle could be “tuned” by either swinging the ramp’s angle out farther onto the mudflat or in closer to the Town dock. They noted that deciding on the best angle would be something engineers could do during the design phase, when considering structural factors, environmental permitting requirements, opportunities to make the ramp accessible over a greater range of the tidal cycle, and other considerations
The group gave only brief consideration to Options 1 and 2 after thoroughly considering the new option. One participant noted that the new option combined the best features of Options 1 and 2. It reduced the fill area required for Option 2 and avoided the issues associated with having the water-side entrance to the launch ramp so close to the Town Pier, as in Option 1.
South Gouldsboro Harbor
The meeting began with a focus on the orthographic drone photo of the harbor infrastructure (below) and a discussion of where the survey markers might be located. Brett Binns, the CRC’s photogrammetry expert, arranged an on-site meeting with one of the group members who has fished and lived in South Gouldsboro since childhood to see if they could locate the markers together.
Next, the group focused on the functions the breakwater provides now and could provide in the future. The breakwater’s primary function is to protect the launch ramp from tides and waves. Everyone present agreed that using the ramp would be impossible for most of the day without the breakwater. Consequently, replacing the breakwater with a pier that allows water to pass underneath is not an option.
Other thoughts about necessary functions included:
- Offloading traps and catch.
- A hoist to make that possible.
- A fuel tank or a structure that could support a fuel truck backing onto it.
- Access for recreational boaters who load and unload things as they head out to islands in Frenchman Bay.
The group also put together a list of design preferences:
- Reuse of the current structure. The group shared the understanding that a significant amount of money had been spent on building the breakwater and that it contained valuable material. They felt that it should be reused and repurposed as much as possible.
- Length. One participant recalled that the Town had initially intended to extend the breakwater to 80 feet, but later extended it to 120 feet in response to a request from South Gouldsboro fishermen. The consensus was that longer is better, but the current length has been adequate.
- Shape. The group’s understanding from the DEP was that the breakwater needed to stay within its original footprint. In general, they preferred a shape with more vertical sides. However, they also recognize that a more gradual slope on the seaward side might better resist waves.
- Width. Participants noted that the breakwater occupies a lot of space but offers little usable space on top. Vertical sides could help correct that. It is clear from other comments that the breakwater needs to be wide enough to accommodate fuel trucks and other large vehicles.
- Float. Everyone agreed that a float would be nice. However, some participants observed that, with more vertical sides and a hoist, a float might not be necessary
