MACHIAS — Sixteen months after it first met, the Upper Machias Bay Master Plan Leadership Committee formally presented its final recommendations this month, calling for an in‑kind replacement of the aging Machias Dike Bridge and outlining steps to address flooding, water quality, natural resources and emergency management.
At the start of the public meeting, Ben Edwards, a committee member and vice chair of the Machias Select Board, said the committee’s work — and its 136‑page report — would not have happened without former Machias Town Manager Bill Kitchen.
Kitchen died unexpectedly in September 2024, a few months before the committee began its work.
“It should be Bill Kitchen standing here. He is the reason (the committee) exists,” Edwards said. “Thank you, Bill, for getting us here and setting this in motion.”
Kitchen moved to Machias in the early 2000s and served on the Machias Select Board from 2017 to 2020.
Edwards also stressed the importance of involving the public — especially notifying private property owners in the Upper Machias Bay region when discussions involve their land — and alerting town officials at the start of the process.
The committee reached a consensus on the need for prompt notifications and on all other recommendations. Edwards described consensus as “a shared willingness to live with a decision and support it.”
Most recommendations received unanimous support.
“Some of you have been working on this for 15 years, others are coming to it tonight for the first time,” Edwards said. “The reason we asked you to be in this room is that what happens next depends on you.”
The committee agrees with the Maine Department of Transportation’s preference for an in‑kind, or precise, replacement of the dike bridge, which carries Route 1, utility lines and the Down East Sunrise Trail across the Middle River.
Recent storms have damaged the 150‑year‑old structure.
However, federal regulations from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration related to endangered Atlantic salmon could change the final outcome of the replacement.
“The structure ultimately permitted and built may not be the one the committee recommended,” Edwards said. “This uncertainty is real, and it is going to hang over this community for years to come.”
The committee weighed fish passage against other shared goals involving natural resources, wetlands, fish and mud flats, as well as the “working economy” that depends on them — the commercial fishery, farms and scenic values.
“Right at the start, we saw that these goals don’t all point in the same direction. That tension is where most of the tradeoffs in this section come from,” Edwards said. “We made a judgment.”
The committee also recommended ensuring that the new dike structure includes arrangements for safe and enjoyable public use, including vendor space and parking.
“In making these recommendations, we considered and discussed countless factors and the vast and far‑reaching impact of the dike now and into the future,” Hannah Rice, a landowner representative and chair of the Upper Machias Bay Master Plan Leadership Committee, said. “It currently holds back the tide and protects about 400‑plus acres of private lands, homes, grassland, thriving habitat and more.”
Machias Town Manager Sarah Craighead Dedmon addressed downtown flooding concerns at the meeting and emphasized the dike’s importance to the area.
“Downtown Machias, during the month of April when (the dike) was shut down for these very necessary repairs, was kind of like a ghost town,” Craighead Dedmon said. “So it really is the heart of our community on so many different levels.”
Among the recommendations to address flooding are fixing drainage issues on Short Street and at the base of Court Street, working with the Maine Department of Transportation to increase inspections and repairs of catch basins, culverts, ditches and outflows, and offering incentives and education for watershed landowners to plant rain gardens, use rain barrels and keep roadside ditches and drains clear. The Short Street and Court Street work includes slowing stormwater that flows downhill there.
The state Department of Transportation has already started repairs that “have made a dramatic improvement in the amount of saltwater that we’re seeing at the base of Court Street,” Craighead Dedmon said.
The town of Machias is also proposing about $36,000 in Short Street repairs and catch basin replacements to go before voters at the annual town meeting, scheduled for June 23.
“That right there will make a huge difference to what it looks like to be downtown and also to the functionality in removing some of the water,” she said. “So there are some things within our grasp in the near term.”
Solutions over the longer term include obtaining a full engineering report on stormwater system upgrades and raising funds to carry out projects that would slow or divert stormwater and reduce flood risk, such as a seawall.
“We’re recommending a systematic approach to inspect what we have, repair what’s broken, and then figure out the best path for upgrades,” Craighead Dedmon said.
Downtown Machias faces flood risk from two directions — rising sea levels from the ocean and swelling river tributaries fueled by heavy rainfall, snowmelt and runoff.
When both surge at once, floods like the 100‑year event Jan. 10, 2024, can strike quickly and unpredictably, leaving residents stranded and buildings damaged.
The recommendations respect local control and “doesn’t prescribe one solution for everyone,” Craighead Dedmon said.
“We’re thinking about what we want downtown Machias to feel like in the future, and we’re doing this at the same time that we’re finalizing our comprehensive plan,” she said. “There are real tradeoffs here between protecting private properties and maintaining a working downtown and adapting to our changing conditions.”
Much of the funding for these proposals will need to come from state and federal sources, including the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, which has already approved repairs to a capped landfill and contributed money to prevent leachate from reaching groundwater supplies. The town of Machias has also received $1.2 million in federal funds for the project, Craighead Dedmon said.
Tora Johnson, director of the Sustainable Prosperity Initiative for the Sunrise County Economic Council and a member of the leadership committee’s steering committee, said the main wastewater goal is to prevent flooding at the treatment plant by upgrading the stormwater system with storage tanks.
Johnson said the upgrades are intended to help prevent combined sewer outflows, which occur “when stormwater and wastewater overwhelm the wastewater system and need to be released directly without treatment.”
The committee also recommends strengthening its emergency management and planning for flood events, which was “excellent, but there was more we could do,” Johnson said. It suggests establishing an Emergency Response and Preparedness Committee and a Community Emergency Response Team, a “trained group of volunteers who can respond to an emergency in a coordinated way that’s guided and engaged with emergency management professionals.”
Edwards ended the meeting with closing remarks and a personal connection to the previous work of Kitchen, who initiated the Upper Machias Bay Master Plan Leadership Committee project, and to the Downeast region.
“That belief that this region deserves more than what it has settled for, and is capable of more than what it has demanded of itself, is what set this work in motion. Bill saw the region and all it could be,” Edwards said. “We are one place. The plan you are about to hear is only one piece of evidence that we are starting to act like it.”
The final committee report and other information are available at sunrisecounty.org/machiasbay.
