Conference showcases
beach monitoring program

Maine beaches may appear to change little from day-to-day or week-to-week during the relatively calm summer months. However, even in summer, the relentless forces of wind and waves transform the beach, building up sediment here and eroding it there. In the fall and winter, the changes are more dramatic. Early fall hurricanes and mid-winter northeasters can pound the beach into sometimes unrecognizable configurations. Sands from the beach and dunes may be pushed back into the adjacent salt marsh or pulled out into offshore deposits. The gently rolling sands of the summer beach are transformed into what one geologist has referred to as "the lean, mean winter beach, hunkered down and ready for anything that the winter sea might dish out."

Joe Kelley and Dan Belknap, geological sciences professors in the University of Maine's School of Marine Sciences, and Steve Dickson, geologist at Maine Geological Survey, developed a volunteer beach profile monitoring program in southern Maine to find out how beaches change over time, the rate at which they change and, using current meters offshore, how changes are related to waves and currents. For the past year, more than 80 volunteers have been using a simple surveying technique to regularly measure changes in sand distribution of 10 southern Maine beaches. Funded by the Maine/New Hampshire Sea Grant College Program, the project has drawn beachfront property owners, retired engineers, citizen group representatives, and others interested in finding out what is happening to their sandy beaches.

According to Dickson, "the enthusiasm of the groups has been incredible. These are people who have been watching their beaches change for years. The monitoring project, which trains volunteers to measure and evaluate their local beaches, gives them a way to understand the processes causing these changes."

The data collected by volunteers, showing how beaches have changed during the year in response to natural or man-made actions, were presented during poster sessions at the State-of-Maine's-Beaches conference. These data, also available on a web site (www.geology.um.maine.edu/beach), could help predict sand volume changes with specific types of storms (e.g., northeasters and southwesters) and estimate beach replenishment costs.

In his closing remarks at the conference, Kelley summarized the state of Maine's beaches. His main points were: beaches are retreating landward over the long term in response to rising sea level; beaches respond to storms by losing sand to offshore areas and reclaiming (at least some of it) during calm summer periods; and developed beaches with seawalls have much less sand than natural beaches and lose and gain more over the course of a year. He cautioned against putting more property at risk by locating new construction too close to the sea and suggested that, as properties are destroyed by storms, they should be moved back from the ocean slowly. Kelley also recommended that beach replenishment should be considered carefully, due to its cost and uncertainty as a long-term solution to erosion problems.

The State-of-Maine's-Beaches conference was sponsored by the Maine Coastal Program, Maine Geological Survey, Maine Sea Grant, and the University of Maine.

Why Are Maine Beaches So Important?
Sandy beaches make money for all of Maine. Highly valued coastal properties produce tax revenues that support local services in coastal towns. As tourism has increased in Maine, beach visitors in the state have also increased. Tourists flock to accessible sandy beaches all along the coast. Although they mainly spend their dollars in the local communities, their sales and lodging taxes are used by the entire state.

Maine's beaches have long attracted new residents to the state. Summer resorts along the shore are now year-round communities. During the 1990s, when the population of Maine as a whole grew by 1.2 percent, York and Sagadahoc counties in the southern section of the state grew by 5.4 percent and 6.3 percent, respectively. The influx of new residents to the shore means more people building homes and roads, and then worrying as the sea inevitably encroaches on the land.

Sea-level rise (about one foot this century), combined with Maine's typically severe winter storms, has resulted in dramatic beach erosion. Homeowners, town officials, scientists, and state agencies have offered numerous options to curtail beach migration, without fully investigating how each beach functions, who will benefit from human intervention, and who will bear the cost. A recent trickle of court cases by disgruntled homeowners and town officials opposed to the 1978 Maine Sand Dunes Law, and the Legislature's amendments to its regulations have eroded the state's major beach protection tool.

Across the country, states and communities are attempting either to halt beach migration, or to replace what nature has removed. Beach replenishment has been attempted from Florida to Maine, with varying results. Often the federal government has subsidized these multi-million-dollar projects. Repeated over time, an engineered solution to beach migration generally costs the taxpayers more than the value of the properties protected. On their own, town officials and homeowners have turned to novel protection devices in order to hold sand on their beaches: placing large banks of plastic "seaweed" offshore, sinking cars or ships to make artificial underwater breakwaters, installing plastic mats on the beach, or simply sandbagging the beach. In Maine, the strategies of various towns have differed, though results have been uniformly discouraging.

Increased demands to use Maine's beaches, the effects of sea-level rise, storm erosion, and human activities have exacerbated conflict in coastal towns. Some property owners want the state or federal government to do whatever is necessary to protect their property, relying on taxpayers to foot the bill. Town officials want to retain the sand that makes their towns attractive summer and year-round communities, but only if all townspeople may access the beach. Environmental interests point out that creatures other than human beings call the beach home and require certain protections.

Recognizing that individual towns' and homeowners' management approaches often conflict, Maine is attempting to draft regional beach management plans. The Southern Maine Regional Planning Commission recently hired a planner specifically to coordinate town beach plans. Data collected by the volunteer beach monitors feeds right into this, providing a baseline for beach management plans.