On Monday, February 13, 2023 the Town Council voted unanimously to authorize the expenditure of $35,000, from unassigned fund balance, as a cash match for an application to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation/National Coastal Resilience Fund (NFWF) for a grant to restore habitat as part of removal of the portion of Sawyer Road/Sawyer Street located in the Spurwink Marsh.  Town Manager Matthew Sturgis explained that the Town of Scarborough is also looking to authorize expenditure in the same amount.  “A lion share of the road is owned by Scarborough and a big challenge for them is to figure out where would the best place be to spend funds on going forward,” Sturgis added.  This will be a second attempt to receive funding from NFWF.

On March 16, 2022, the Cape Elizabeth Town Council and Scarborough Town Council met in workshop session to collaborate on future strategies for Sawyer Road (Cape Elizabeth) and Sawyer Street (Scarborough), which includes a 1,400-foot section of road crossing the Scarborough Marsh.  Sawyer Street has floods multiple times a year and the existing culvert is restricting tidal flows, resulting in scouring pools.  Given sea level increases, problems will only increase.  

On May 9, 2022, the council authorized the submission of a grant proposal to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation/National Coastal Resilience Fund (NFWF) for assessment and preliminary design work to remove a portion of Sawyer Road sitting in the marsh and replacement of the Spurwink Avenue culvert.  The assessment/design study would also include a traffic study, road removal and marsh restoration design, legal, right-of-way and utility information, and public engagement.  The grant application was not funded.

In a January 26, 2023 Memo from Town Planner Maureen O’Meara, O’Meara explains that administrators of NFWF grant indicated in a follow up interview that, “A reformatted application submitted spring/summer 2023 would be competitive.”  “A principal comment was that the study should shuffle the principal pieces to feature habitat restoration.  A significant way to do this is to increase the cash match to at least cover the traffic study ($55,000),” O’Meara writes.

The total project funded by the NFWF grant is $324,000.  The 2022 submission offered a cash match of $15,000 from both Cape Elizabeth and Scarborough, for a total of $30,000.  The recommendation for the second submission is that each town contribute $35,000, for a cash match of $70,000.

Aerial image of Spurwink Marsh