May 20—Gov. Janet Mills is creating a commission to help Maine rebuild from a string of winter storms that caused an estimated $90 million in damage and to develop a long-term infrastructure resilience plan to prepare for more climate-driven disasters in the future.

“The time is now for immediate steps to strengthen (our) ability to better withstand the impacts of a changing climate,” Mills said in a prepared statement. “My forthcoming commission will give us the foundation to do just that so we can protect the Maine we know, love and cherish for our children and grandchildren.”

On Tuesday, Mills will travel to Stonington to sign an executive order establishing the Infrastructure Rebuilding and Resilience Commission. The public roads and working waterfront in Stonington, which lands more lobster than any other port in Maine, were hard hit by this winter’s extreme storms.

Working with local partners, the commission will travel across the state to understand the challenges that occur following storms, the gaps in important resources like financing and insurance, and ways to improve Maine’s electric grid and energy systems, according to a statement from Mills’ office.

“We must ask the hard questions about what we can, and must, do to strengthen our ability to withstand storms that are increasingly more severe and dangerous and that pose a real threat to our state’s critical infrastructure, economy and people,” Mills said.

Eleven disasters have been declared since Mills took office in January 2019, according to the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency. Eight of those have been declared in the last two years, an unprecedented number in Maine history.

The storms that shellacked Maine in December and January caused an estimated $90 million in damage to public infrastructure like roads, bridges and buildings in nearly every Maine county, state officials say, and millions more to private properties, including working waterfronts.

“It’s clear to me, after signing my eighth request for a disaster declaration, that there is more work to do by the state, towns and cities, industries and businesses, community leaders and philanthropists, as well as utilities, to plan and prepare for future disasters like those we’ve just experienced,” Mills said.

According to a 2021 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the increase in greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane in our atmosphere caused by the burning of fossil fuels has increased the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events.

Climate change is when average weather conditions undergo a major shift over time. Tying any one of Maine’s winter storms to climate change requires an in-depth analysis that has not yet been done, but long-term weather records prove Maine is warmer, wetter and stormier than it was a century ago.

WARMER AND WETTER

Scientists said those storms “fit with the science” of a changing climate: warm air can hold more moisture than cold air. For every degree of increase, the atmosphere can hold about 4% more water per unit area. Maine experienced one of the warmest and least snowy winters on record.

In a traditional winter storm, with temperatures in the 20s and 30s, the atmosphere would not have been able to hold as much moisture as it did in December and January, leading to less overall precipitation. And it would have fallen as snow, not torrential downpours like it did in many coastal areas.

The National Climate Assessment released last year predicts extreme precipitation will continue to increase in frequency and ferocity under all global warming scenarios heading into the future. It projects steep increases in extreme rain for parts of Maine in dire warming scenarios.

For example, Aroostook County will see an 83% jump in extreme rain days, the most of any U.S. county under the 7.2-degree Fahrenheit warming scenario. Extreme rain and flooding can cause a range of problems, ranging from shellfish bed closures to washed-out roads or homes to loss of life.

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