The Maine Climate Council has announced new surveys and public forums for sharing your feedback on a wide variety of strategies for inclusion in the update of the state climate action plan. You can either complete the full 20-minute survey or fill out one of the 5-minute topic-based surveys. All surveys close in mid-September. You can also join any of the six in-person public meetings, held throughout September, or register for the Zoom public meeting, which will this coming Wednesday at September 4th at 6pm. The public forum will be in Biddeford on September 19th, at 6pm.

Maine was recently awarded a $69 million climate resilience grant through NOAA’s highly competitive Climate Resilience Grant Challenge to protect communities, environment, and working waterfronts from extreme storms, flooding, and rising sea levels.

The Federal grant represents one of the largest investments in climate resilience ever in Maine history and will support local climate action by expanding support for the State’s Community Resilience Partnership (CRP), Infrastructure Adaptation Fund, and regional technical assistance. RSRP staff look forward to being active partners for implementation of this historic initiative. Click here to learn more about the grant.

When the State created the Community Resilience Partnership (CRP) to support local climate action, they also created a Regional Coordinator Pilot to support communities enrolled in the partnership. Through this pilot SMPDC has served as part of the Region 1 Coordinator Collaborative (R1CC) along with the Greater Portland Council of Governments, Lincoln County Regional Planning Commission, and Resilient Communities L3C to support communities in York, Cumberland, Lincoln, Knox, Sagadahoc, and southern Oxford counties.

Over the two-year pilot period the R1CC provided technical assistance and grant support to Region 1 communities. Activities included:

• Supporting 64 enrolled and 15 enrolling communities (67% of communities in Region 1).
• Helping communities receive $3,666,000 in CRP Community Action Grants.
• Helping communities receive $6,763,000 in other state and federal grants.
• Delivering workshops and training through our Building Stronger Communities series. 

While the Regional Coordinator Pilot is ending, SMPDC is looking forward to continuing to provide regional coordination support for communities in the CRP. Stay tuned to learn what is going to happen next! 

SMPDC’s Sustainability and Resilience Division was awarded over $500,000 in grant funds from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to enhance coastal resilience in Kittery, adjacent to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. A collaboration between the Town of Kittery, local stakeholders, and the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, the project will include site assessment and preliminary design of nature-based solutions in tidal wetlands and wildlife habitat. The project will also assess nature-based solutions to enhance the resilience of critical transportation infrastructure.

Earlier this year the Sustainability and Resilience Team wrapped up the Climate Action Plan (CAP) Cohort, with each community’s CAP being passed unanimously. Thanks to that process, valuable resources such as the Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment Framework are now available to all communities! Those materials are now all housed on the division’s page on the SMPDC website, here. 

The CAP Cohort program also highlighted actions best addressed on the regional level. The infographic below highlights those overarching actions, and potential next steps to address them.