Maine Sen. Susan Collins secures $23 million for Camp Ellis shore repairs, combating erosion caused by historic storms. She also spearheads $8 million partnership to develop innovative composite bridge materials with the University of Maine.
City of Saco photo
Millions of dollars are coming to Saco, Maine to prevent erosion at its Camp Ellis neighborhood on the state’s coast, south of Portland.
Millions of dollars are coming to Saco, Maine to prevent erosion at its Camp Ellis neighborhood on the state's coast, south of Portland.
Maine U.S. Sen. Susan Collins announced May 15, 2025, that $23 million in federal funding would be used for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to help rehabilitate the shorelines.
The approved funding will support the building of a 750-ft. spur jetty that extends off Camp Ellis's main jetty, along with replenish roughly 300,000 cu. yds. of sand, Portland's WMTW-TV reported May 16, 2025. The entire project will cost roughly $45 million.
The historic January 2024 storms that battered Maine caused extensive damage to Camp Ellis, a working waterfront that is home to fishing and lobstering operations, charter boats and other local businesses. It is located near the southern end of Saco Bay by the mouth of the Saco River.
The oceanside area of Saco has several beaches, including Camp Ellis, where the main jetty in place has proved problematic in that it causes erosion to the sand dunes which protect the shoreline from damaging storm surges.
"The erosion has just devastated this area," Saco Mayor Jodi MacPhail said to WMTW-TV, adding that the city has lost hundreds of feet of shoreline.
Collins' office noted that the Saco shoreline in 1998 was 400 ft. from where it was 90 years before.
"People just love this area and we're doing everything we can to try to save it," MacPhail said.
The new spur jetty being built by the USACE is meant to lessen the older main jetty's impact by decreasing wave energy reaching the beach and limiting the loss of sediment from the shore.
More than 150 years ago, the USACE built a jetty extending out from the Saco River, adjacent to Camp Ellis Beach, and expanded it in the 1950s.
However, the stone structure altered the pattern of ocean currents and sand deposition and is the primary cause of the severe erosion of Camp Ellis, eventually washing away 38 homes, according to Collins' office, which added that the Saco shoreline in 1998 was 400 ft. from where it was 90 years before.
"The construction of a spur jetty at Camp Ellis will help to prevent the severe erosion that has destroyed dozens of residents' homes over generations," she said in a news release. "As Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, I worked hard to secure this funding, which will help to resolve this problem, protect property, and restore the receding shoreline."
The city of Saco and the USACE signed off on the multi-year shoreline project in February 2024.
One year later, the federal agency's New England District announced that it was proceeding with designs for the initial phase of the Camp Ellis Beach Shoreline Damage Mitigation Project and that was once the stone spur jetty is constructed, the USACE would begin Phase II — the placement of beach fill along Camp Ellis Beach.
"Design and construction of this project comes after many years of study and coordination," the USACE said in a press release, including conducting critical wave modeling since the end of 2023 to inform the design of the spur jetty.
Those designs, the Corps of Engineers said, are quickly nearing their completion.
With the funding in place due in large measure to the efforts of Sen. Collins, the agency said it hopes to announce its construction timeline as soon as it finalizes its plans and specifications.
Once construction begins on the two-phased shoreline rehabilitation project, MacPhail said the effort is expected to take three years. Besides the federal funding, she noted that the rest of the money will come from local sources.
Collins Helps Facilitate Joint Effort to Develop Composite Bridge Materials
On May 16, 2025, Sen. Collins said that a U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) research agency will enter into an $8 million partnership with the University of Maine (UMaine) to further develop technologies that will deliver bridges at half the cost, in half the time, and with twice the lifespan of many current bridges.
USDOT's Advanced Research Projects Agency–Infrastructure (ARPA-I) is moving forward to collaborate with UMaine's Advanced Structures and Composites Center (ASCC) to integrate technologically advanced composite materials into bridge construction and to explore AI-assisted design tools.
"The [ASCC] has long been a leader in this innovative space, and I cannot think of a better partner for the federal government for this bridge building initiative," Collins said in a news release from her Washington office. "This investment will support cutting-edge research that has the potential to revolutionize how we construct our nation's bridges — saving taxpayers money while creating good-paying jobs here in Maine."
The project's funding comes from the USDOT's ARPA-I Exceptional Bridges through Innovative Design and Groundbreaking Engineering (X-BRIDGE) program. According to Collins, UMaine will work with ARPA-I's X-BRIDGE program to create and demonstrate their results at scale through the construction of a prototype bridge.
UMaine's X-BRIDGE project has a total of five major tasks, with a base year budget of $8 million plus two potential option years of $6 million each (totaling $20 million for the overall project). It covers the design of the university's Composite Bridge System (CBS), as well as developing and prototyping its technologies, before constructing a full-scale demonstration bridge using CBS's other partnership with the Maine Department of Transportation (MaineDOT).
Full-scale construction of the demonstration bridge is expected to be primarily funded through an infrastructure owner and operator, and appropriate partnerships for its construction will be finalized during the execution of the research and development project.
"We are delighted that ARPA-I has selected the University of Maine for this inaugural grant competition. It is a big day for UMaine and for providing more durable bridges to the public," said Dr. Habib Dagher, executive director of the UMaine ASCC. "Building on our years of work on composites materials, this funding will allow us to develop the X-BRIDGE, which will increase the speed of construction, increase the lifespan of bridges, and reduce lifecycle costs including installation and maintenance costs."
In addition to helping facilitate this alliance, Collins also procured more than $18 million in congressionally directed spending for UMaine's ASCC through her leading role on the Senate Appropriations Committee.
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