MaineDOT Pushes Seawall Road Repairs to Fall 2025
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SOUTHWEST HARBOR—The Maine Department of Transportation has told the Town of Southwest Harbor and Acadia National Park that the state’s permanent and full repair to 1,000 feet of the Seawall Road will not occur this spring, but is being postponed until fall 2025.
“It’s concerning and my recommendation is that we put it on an upcoming agenda,” Town Manager Karen Reddersen told the Southwest Harbor Select Board, January 14.
A January 7 letter from MaineDOT Deputy Commissioner Dale Doughty to Reddersen and Acadia National Park Superintendent Kevin Schneider explains that the postponement is due to the town, park, and state being unable to reach an agreement about future repair costs by early 2025.
Future repairs are expected because of the road’s vulnerability to sea-level rise and predicted more intense storms. It is not considered a primary road with urgent needs.
This summer, after months of closure, the state agreed to let local businesses voluntarily do a temporary fix to get the road—beloved by MDI residents and tourists—back in working order. Those fixes to the looping road which joins Southwest Harbor to Tremont and also to Acadia National Park’s Seawall Campground, Ship Harbor Trail, and Wonderland Trail are considered temporary.
“Since it is clear that the three parties will be unable to reach an agreement by early 2025, the department has pushed the planned repairs to Seawall Road to the fall of 2025, as outlined in the July and October 2024 letters,” Doughty wrote. “The department intends to continue discussions and negotiations on the terms of such an agreement with both the Town of Southwest Harbor and the NPS over the coming months and expects a signed agreement as an outcome of this process, whereby each party is responsible for an equal share of any future repairs beyond 2025.”
The letter stresses that the town and park need to agree to a three-way cost split for future repairs after 2025.
“As outlined in both July and October 2024 letters from MaineDOT to the Town of Southwest Harbor, the department intends to provide a full repair to Seawall Road in 2025, the first step is the execution of a cost-sharing agreement for future repairs,” Doughty wrote.
As proposed, that share would see Acadia National Park and Southwest Harbor paying 33% of the costs for future repairs and MaineDot would pay for 34%.
Doughty explains that the department’s job is to “evaluate repairs and improvements to assets across the state that are damaged by increasingly extreme and unpredictable weather patterns.”
Only repairing the road, he writes, when it is in a vulnerable location to weather and “expecting that it will not be subject to the same potentially damaging conditions is impractical and unreasonable.”
The road is classified by the state as a “priority 4 roadway,” which is the lowest class that the state holds responsibility for. He wrote that the road isn’t regional and has two independent access points (one on each end), which lowers its priority.
“This and other roads and bridges in similar circumstances are and will be looked at closely to determine the wisdom and financial prudency of continuing to maintain assets at increasing climatological risk,” Doughty wrote.
Doughty outlined the state’s plans earlier this year in a letter to Marilyn Lowell, Southwest Harbor’s former town manager.
“To prepare for the likelihood that this road will be damaged again, over the 2024 winter,” Doughty wrote, “Maine DOT will enter into an agreement with the town of Southwest Harbor and the National Park Service that will confirm a joint partnership to address damage from future storm events beyond the 2025 repair.”
That draft term sheet specifies that the MaineDOT will repair and rehabilitate the Seawall Road “if and only if all parties reach a multiparty agreement for cost sharing future repairs that exceed routine capital maintenance.” The repair is 1,000 feet and extends from Seawall Hotel to the entrance of the Seawall Campground. It includes resiliency components.
“This is obviously something that we feel is needed,” Reddersen said, Tuesday night.
Tremont will be supportive and engage in the process though not a cost-sharing partner, she said, and she’ll be reaching out to legislators for support in dealing with the state agency.
Selectboard member James Vallette said that they might go to the voters to discuss costs for future commitment to road repairs.
“We’re not going to unilaterally sign on to a forever agreement,” Vallette said. They could, he said, but it would be against the interests of the town to act unilaterally. “What does that look like? Forever paying a third?”
He suggested the town look into other options—options that the state might be forcing the town to consider. Those options might include hiring local contractors for future repairs or asking the state to abandon its interest in the road. There seemed to be sentiment among those attending to research all options and costs and consequences.
Reddersen said there is some out-language in the state-proposed MOU and she had questions about what would it mean if Southwest Harbor agreed to the plan, but the park did not. The board will put it on a future agenda.
In a December 12 email to MaineDOT, Acadia National Park Superintendent Kevin Schneider wrote that the state’s ask for a five-day turnaround to respond to the state’s terms sheet about repairs to the road was unreasonable.
Schneider wrote that the park is “open to collaborating on the financing of future repairs to Seawall Road.” However, because the park is part of the National Park Service, there are multiple “significant legal and policy questions that require vetting.”
That vetting is within the NPS and bigger than just Acadia.
“That said, asking us to review and respond to a terms sheet within a five-day period, and then finalize a financial agreement by January 1, is unreasonable and unrealistic. Further, this terms sheet does not entirely reflect the conversation we had on November 25th,” Schneider wrote. “For example, we stated during that call that we may not be able to enter into an agreement that commits the federal government to funding in future years due to the Anti-Deficiency Act. This is one of several questions that need to be vetted with the Department of the Interior’s Solicitors Office.”
Schneider continued, “After raising these concerns during the call, we understood that an agreement would take the form of a more general memorandum of understanding that would outline roles and responsibilities, and would set up a process that would allow for future discussion and decision-making about cost sharing repairs if the road is structurally damaged due to storms. Very specific issues that are contained within the term sheet you shared—such as invoicing by April 1— would not be appropriate for this more general MOU.”
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