Happy holidays from the Sustainability and Resilience Division at SMPDC. As 2024 comes to an end, the team is grateful for another busy year full of exciting projects and significant progress on sustainability and resilience efforts in the region. Here are our staff’s highlights:

• Wrapping up the Southern Maine Climate Action Planning Cohort project with all four climate action plans unanimously adopted by their communities’ governing bodies.

• Moving coastal resilience projects, such as Ogunquit's nature-based solutions pilot study, from planning to implementation.

• Receiving the finalized award and kicking off the Southern Maine Energy Navigator Pilot.

• Making connections with communities through assisting with their enrollment in the Community Resilience Partnership.

• Hosting the first ever Southern Maine Climate Action Workshop in partnership with UNE.

This fall, through the Community Resilience Partnership’s (CRP) Service Provider program, division staff successfully enrolled the towns of Alfred, Hollis, Parsonsfield and South Berwick in the Partnership. The York County Soil and Water Conservation District also helped the towns of Acton and Shapleigh enroll. With these six new enrollments, twenty of SMPDC’s thirty-nine member communities are now part of the Partnership. 

For the December round of Community Action Grants (CAGs), division staff assisted six communities with their applications; the four Service Provider towns and two other SMPDC member communities. The applications included a variety of climate resilience actions, such as:



·      Nature-based solutions for coastal resilience

·      Municipal energy planning

·      Energy efficiency upgrades

·      Open space planning

·      Resilient trails

Congratulations to all Maine communities that enrolled in the partnership and submitted CAGs this December!

In November, SMPDC held its first Southern Maine Climate Action Workshop, to facilitate collaboration and discussion among communities and partner organizations implementing climate actions in southern Maine. The day long workshop included a panel on climate action plans, a keynote address from Dr. Susanne Moser, and breakout discussions. To learn more about the workshop check out News Center Maine’s, and UNE’s coverage. 

The division also compiled a notes and resources document that includes highlights from the panel discussion and breakout sessions. 

SMPDC and the towns of Kennebunk and Kennebunkport have been awarded a grant for a project to undertake hydrologic and hydraulic modeling to understand flooding in the Kennebunk River along with the deployment of a tide gate to track water levels and water quality testing. This project will monitor, model, and assess the Kennebunk River ecosystem for coastal flood risk and water quality conditions to gather critical baseline data for the evaluation of possible adaptation and resilience decisions.

The Kennebunk River is a critically important coastal system which serves as the border between Kennebunk and Kennebunkport and as the center of both communities’ economic, cultural, and historical hubs. This project seeks to build the capacity for collaborative decision-making when it comes to resilience and adaptation along the river. This project will also engage community members to learn about their experiences with flooding and their hopes for making riverfront areas more resilient.