STONINGTON, Maine — As coastal communities continue to rebuild after a string of powerful storms struck this winter, Gov. Mills signed an executive order Tuesday to create the Maine Infrastructure Rebuilding and Resilience Commission.
The 24-member group will study the state’s response and approach to the severe weather that hit Maine over the past 18 months and recommend strategies for storm resilience and recovery.
This follows a season that saw more than $90 million dollars in damage to public infrastructure during the storms of December and January alone, according to the governor's office.
"Our response to those storms must… include looking forward. It must also include asking the hard questions about what we can and must do to withstand storms to come," Mills said Tuesday at the Stonington Lobster Co-Op.
The commission is made up of several top state officials and agency heads, as well as local officeholders, experts in fields related to recovery (like construction and finance), and two representatives from "impacted industries."
Curt Brown, a lobsterman and commission member, sees finding a path to greater storm resilience as a critical task. "So much of our commerce and our economy relies on infrastructure that is vulnerable to these storms," Brown said.
The commission has several key responsibilities outlined in the executive order, including creating a long-term infrastructure resilience plan and ensuring the state is "maximizing the use of all federal, state, municipal and private funding resources available for storm recovery..."
To carry out this task, the governor’s office says the commission will travel across the state to meet with affected communities.
"You gotta get local knowledge, you gotta get on the ground and know exactly what’s happening," Bruce Van Note, who heads the Maine Department of Transportation and serves on the new commission, said Tuesday.
The work of the commission will culminate in a final report of its findings, which is due in May of 2025. The group is required to publish an interim report by mid-November, according to the executive order.