Last month, Senator Collins secured $500,000 in federal funding to dredge Frenchboro’s Lunt Harbor. The small island located eight miles off the coast relies on marine transportation and fishing for survival, so a safely navigable harbor is critical for the island’s everyday function. The harbor, the main point for commercial fishing activity, is also the only access point for all mainland needs, including mail, groceries, medical services, and other supplies. The harbor had not been dredged in more than fifty years and because of that gap in maintenance, shoaling has severely limited harbor navigation, with access only possible during certain phases of the tidal cycle. This new funding provides the financial capability to get the job done, enhancing access to the central hub for Frenchboro’s economic activity and basic community needs.
Serving islands takes a good listening ear and a keen eye for opportunity, and it also helps to be in the right place at the right time. The Frenchboro dredging project is a good example of that, as it started on my first trip out to the island with a colleague who was spending the day with the school through Island Institute’s Outer Islands Teaching & Learning Collaborative. After spending time with students in the schoolhouse for the morning, the afternoon turned to the baseball field. With only five students, my colleague and I were recruited to join the students on the field, while a select board member, Eric Best, volunteered to be that week’s gym teacher. For the last hour of the school day, my colleague and I were on the same level as five elementary school-aged boys, swinging the bat and fielding positions.
After the game was over and we brought the equipment back to the school, my colleague, Eric, and I got on the boat back to the mainland. As we rode the waves back to Bass Harbor, Eric asked me about my role at the Island Institute. When I told him about how I engage with municipalities, he said “Maybe you’re the exact person I need to talk to! I am a new select board member and I want to get our harbor dredged.” I said I would see what I could do to help.
We helped make Senator Collins’ staff aware of this issue and have worked on this project for nearly two years in partnership with Senator Collins, many federal partners, state legislators, and my colleague, Nick Battista, Chief Policy Officer at Island Institute. Senator Collins was recently successful in securing Congressional Directed Spending funding which will speed up the project, to be completed by the Army Corps of Engineers in the next couple of years. Frenchboro has a future dredging project on the horizon – a giant sense of relief among the community.
The story of how Frenchboro got to this point is one about how Island Institute serves communities along Maine’s coast. A lot of what my colleagues and I do is leverage internal and external resources to help islands meet their needs. In this case, residents of Frenchboro communicated the need for dredging to Island Institute staff and entrusted us to work with our federal partners to navigate the path to meet their goals. In a letter to Senator Collins about the funding request, Frenchboro residents and members of the fishing community, Rachel Bishop and David Lunt said,
“Island Institute has worked with the Frenchboro community for decades and have added their support for this project and the efforts to help us address the decreasing navigability of our harbor. They recognize the critical role that our harbor plays in the economic and community resilience of our island. The need for safe, reliable access to the inner harbor is critical for all aspects of island life and work.”
We couldn’t be more thrilled about this success story of how a collaboration between a community development organization and dedicated public servants can make a big impact on a small, Maine fishing community.
