In May of this year, Gouldsboro’s Coastal Resilience Committee (CRC) submitted an application for funding to the Maine Infrastructure Adaptation Fund (MIAF) to elevate and reconstruct a stream crossing on Corea Road near its junction with Cranberry Point Road that was deep underwater during the January 2024 storm. The photos below, one showing this stretch of Corea Road at low tide on a normal day and the other showing how it looked on the morning of January 10, 2024, show the severity of the problem. Everyone on Cranberry Point and Francis Pound Road was cut off from emergency services.
This proposal for construction funding grew out of an 18-month project that brought engineers, hydrologists, and environmental consultants together with Corea residents to explore alternative road designs for two locations around Corea Harbor that were flooded and impassable during the January 2024 storm. An article we published on this site in November 2025 recaps the meetings with residents and the subsequent design work. Two outcomes emerged from that project and from related outreach to FEMA by Emergency Plan Coordinator Jackie Johnston and the town staff.
- With assistance from FEMA, the Town rebuilt the causeway connecting Crowley Island to the rest of Corea, raising it by about two feet. That work is now complete.
- The engineers and others working on the project, drawing upon input from residents and data collected in wetland delineation and other site investigations at the stream crossing, developed preliminary, permit-level designs that would elevate the road at this point by about two feet and replace the 48″ culvert with a bridge. (The picture at the top of this post is taken from that set of drawings.)
Replacing the culvert with a bridge will provide a much wider opening for water movement, as shown below. During storms with substantial rainfall, water running down the stream from Arrowhead Pond backs up on the landward side of the road and exits the culvert with a great deal of force, scouring the shoreline across from the culvert on the ocean side. (See the picture at the top of this post.)
The suggestion to replace the culvert with a bridge came during one of the design meetings when a village resident pointed out that there used to be a bridge over the stream crossing. Another resident, whose property abuts the stream, provided a picture of the bridge. Several residents who wrote letters of support for the town’s proposal to the MIAF expressed preference for restoring the stream crossing to a bridge.
If funded, the project will not only involve replacing the culvert with a bridge, but will also include elevating the road, replacing other culverts with larger ones in the construction area, regrading approaches to affected driveways, building retaining walls, building and then removing a temporary bypass road so that people can still travel to Francis Pound Road and out to Cranberry Point while bridge construction is going on, and new road construction and pavement.
The total estimated cost of the project (final design, engineering, environmental permitting, construction, and project management) is $1,605,429, of which $1,208,000 is for construction. Gouldsboro’s application to MIAF requests $1,525,158 (95% of the total estimated cost). If the request is granted, the town will provide the required 5% match ($80,271) by drawing funds from the town’s Coastal Planning and Protection Reserve.
Gouldsboro will learn whether it is being recommended to NOAA for a conditional award sometime this fall. If Gouldsboro’s project is recommended to NOAA, NOAA will conduct an environmental compliance review, which will require an additional 3 to 6 months. So, Gouldsboro will not know whether its request will be awarded until sometime in the first quarter of 2027. If the town receives an award, final design and permitting will take place in 2027, and construction would probably occur between November 15, 2028, and April 15, 2029, to align with the US Army Corps of Engineers’ work window for tidal waters.
