Governor emphasizes the future of the climate resilience in Damariscotta

Governor Janet Mills stood in addition to large, shiny photos of Damariscottas Back parking on Wednesday, May 7th, to Lincoln County and State Leaders that Maine would continue to prepare for the winter storms of the future.

“We enter into a new era of natural disasters that will threaten the future of communities such as Damariscotta and municipalities in the state of Maine, domestic and coastal,” said Mills.

At the press conference, which agreed this afternoon at the Maineehealth Lincoln Hospital this afternoon, Mills presented the final report of the Maine Infrastructure Rebuilding and Resilience Commission to a nationwide audience. The Commission arrived in May 2024 in response to the extreme weather of the previous winter and the frequent storm in Maine in recent years.

According to the report, Maine has noticed eight disaster declarations and an emergency declaration since March 2022. All of this was with severe storms, with effects that all corner of the state reached.

“We no longer hear and see the storms from yesterday in Maine,” said Mills. “The ocean warms up, the sea rises and the winds are wilder.”

In order to prepare for the further effects of the changing environment of Maine, the Maine infrastructure reorganization and resilience committee was instructed to improve the reaction of the state to the latest stormy storms and the development of a long-term plan to improve the willingness of Maine to the future storm.

The resulting 80-page report, which delivers less than a year after the group has been convened, provides the Commission's answer to this charge. The plan contains 50 action steps that are divided into three focus areas.

The first focus area is to strengthen the infrastructure, from streets and bridges to energy infrastructure such as power lines. This focus area includes steps such as the expansion of the financing of infrastructure development in Maine von Maine, which is strongest, and the improvement of data acquisition to high risk and often affected areas, such as B. areas that often lose electricity during the storms.

The second focus is to improve disaster prevention, reaction and reconstruction. This focus area requires the improvement of communication between first aiders, community leaders and the general public during and after emergencies as well as improving relationships with people in Main's endangered communities to spread information about risks and security at storm events and disasters.

The third focus area is about the sustainable dynamics of resilience planning, which describes the plan as “strategic investments”: expansion of resilience credit and insurance programs as well as investments in local councils, planning of commissions and emergency networks are among the goals described in this section.

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“The changes in our weather and our climate harm people, communities and companies in our state,” said Mills. “We have to prevent as much damage as possible and be ready to recover quickly when storms demand their toll.”

In order to get to the Mainehealth Lincoln Hospital, where the Commission presented its report, the participants of the press conference drove through a construction zone on the Causeway, which the hospital connected with the Bristol Road in Damariscotta. Cindy Wade, hospital president, found that this acts as an example of a project that is already in the climate in the climate in the climate that improve the company in her facility and make life safer for the residents of Maine.

The project is supposed to fix the flood of the dam, which has been taking place in severe storms and floods in recent years, said Wade. The floods prevented ambulances from accessing the hospital via the main route.

Later, the Damariscotta Town Manager Andrew Dorr group followed the parking lot in the city center, where a project of the climate resilience is about to prevent the floods of the city center. The project includes a rainwater retention tank that is installed under the parking lot and can handle a “6-inch rainstorm in a period of six hours,” said Dorr.

In the parking lot, the business owners in the city center spoke of floods about the effects on their livelihood and hope that the new improvements in the infrastructure would reduce the prevalence of this effects in the future.

Linda Nelson and Dan Tishman wrote the uncertainty of federal financing, including the proposed removal of the Federal Emergency Management Association, wrote to the report in the report. However, the couple still urged the investment in the resistance of the climate and reported a report by the US Chamber of Commerce in which he states that every 1 dollar -US -Dollar, which was spent on the resistance of the climate, saves the municipalities on average 13 US dollars on the effects on the storm effects, the clean -up work and the relaxation.

“Your presence here today underlines the importance of the work of the Commission,” said Dorr to the group of Lincoln Hospital. “The plan offers clear guidance and a street map for communities like ours, in order to be stronger, to ward off the storm effects faster and possibly alleviate the effects that have storms on our infrastructure.”

To read the full report of the Maine Infrastructure Rebuilding and Resilience Commission, visit Maine.gov/future/infrastructure commission.