Maine Sea Grant, the National Sea Grant Law Center, and NOAA’s Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management recently received a grant from NOAA’s Preserve America Initiative to record oral histories showcasing working waterfront preservation efforts. These oral histories will highlight community-based implementation of “tools,” such as land use planning, historic preservation, and financing mechanisms, to preserve working waterfronts. The collection will be archived on NOAA’s Voices from the Fisheries website and linked to the Sustainable Working Waterfront Toolkit. 

Maine Sea Grant has updated the Maine Property Owner's Guide to Managing Flooding, Erosion & Other Coastal Hazards with detailed information on navigating state and federal regulatory and permitting processes associated with actions such as elevating a house, moving a house back away from the water, restoring dunes, creating buffers and stabilizing coastal bluffs. Jim Cassida of Normandeau Associates Environmental Consultants helped to make this new information available. Examples of property owners who have taken some of these steps are highlighted in case studies from across southern Maine.