Eroding Trust: How Biased “Experts” and a Lazy Media Shape Maine Policy

Peter Slovinsky is a marine geologist for the Maine Geological Survey. This past week he made the Maine media aware of a serious problem with erosion on Casco Bay’s Chebeague Island that is jeopardizing a popular area known as “The Hook.” Using aerial photos taken by drone on behalf of the Greater Portland Council of Governments, Slovinsky alerted the public about serious erosion problems occurring there since at least 2020.

Every major newspaper in Maine dutifully printed the story, apparently without any effort to scrutinize its content. The Press Herald, Bangor Daily News, and Maine Public all ran pieces assuming the “facts” in the story were true.

The story presents side by side photos taken in 2020 and 2023 as evidence of widespread erosion. These photos and how they are interpreted should have raised important questions among news editors. Questions that should have been answered before the story was published, but, as is so often the case with Maine media, they did not.

First, the 2020 “before” photo was taken at low tide and the 2023 “after” photo at high tide so that the amount of sand on the shoreline appears far greater before than after.  Secondly, to the naked eye, the shoreline and access road does not look eroded, but rather inundated by sand pushed ashore by the storm surge.

Rather than a series of larger storms and higher surges, between 2020 and 2023, the changes appear to be the result of a single storm. A quick look at Google’s free and easily accessed “Earth” app online shows two revealing aerial images of Chebeague, one taken in October 2021 and another taken on April 14, of this year.  

The 2023 aerial shows an enormous amount of “new” sand in and around the subject area that did not appear in the image taken just 18 months earlier. Within this narrowed time period, one significant event stands out.

The top photo, taken in October 2021 shows the road and parking lot are fully intact. The bottom photo, taken a year and a half later on April 14, 2023, shows the same, but the road has been covered over by sand pushed in from the bay. Rather than erosion, which is the reduction of onshore sand, there is more sand onshore here. The intact roadbed and parking area are still well defined and visible under the sand.

On Friday, December 23, 2022, a coastal storm brought torrential rain and hurricane force winds to much of Maine. That storm knocked out power at the Portland Jetport and caused damage to the Portland Head Light. Peaking with the late morning high tide, the storm resulted in the fourth highest tide on record. No scientific study, however, claiming to show long-term trends based on a sample size of one storm is worthy of serious consideration.

In its story on the Chebeague “erosion,” Maine Public quoted local resident Phyllis Brunner who said, “there are few viable long term options as intense storms become more frequent.”

More frequent? Though Slovinsky blames the “erosion” on what he called “increased storm events,” according to his own Maine Geological Survey, very few of the largest storm surges in the history of the Portland area have occurred in the last few decades, much less the last few years.

Of the other ten highest storm surges in Portland history, only one occurred in this millennium (2010). The remainder occurred prior to 1978, well outside the range where they could be attributed to global climate change. Clearly, the evidence does not support the theory that the largest storm surges are ”more frequent” in Casco Bay.

Brunner then made an interesting observation that discredits the accelerating erosion theory. “Still, she said there are positive signs that the beach is rebuilding itself with less traffic on the access road.”

According to newspaper articles, Slovinsky claims that “There’s erosion that’s occurred along that stretch from 2020 to 2023 that is averaging about 12 feet per year. You’re talking about dramatic changes.”

This is a puzzling statement that suggests that the width of the segment of land leading out to The Hook has shrunk by about 36 feet since 2020.  Aerial photos on Google Earth, however, show that today, the distance between the mean high water lines on either side of the narrowest part of this stretch of land measures just over 100 feet. That is at least ten feet wider than it was just two years ago, and five feet wider than in 2013.

What is really happening on Chebeague seems clear from two aerial photos taken earlier this year. One, from April 14, 2023, shows the area totally inundated by sand, likely from the December 23, 2022 storm. The other, from the summer of 2023, shows the road and parking area re-emerging from beneath the sand as the area restores itself naturally. The road has not been eroded away. Its sharp lines have become clearer and more distinct since April, proving that it is still intact.

Speaking of rebuilding itself, just eighteen miles northeast of Chebeague is Popham Beach at the mouth of the Morse River. On a semi-regular basis, geologically speaking, southerly storms shove sand into the mouth of the Morse shifting its path from southward to eastward causing its currents to scour away the sand that makes up the popular Popham Beach State Park.

In 2008, the state’s park system built a new, state of the art shower building, siting it back 250 feet from the beach. The following year, a December storm clogged the mouth of the Morse and the current began its often-repeated cycle of stripping away the beach and shoreline. Remarkably, the damage became so extensive that it threatened to reach the new shower building, meaning it had moved the waterline more than 200 feet further inland.

As has always been the case, the pressure from the Morse’s current eventually forced open its traditional southward flow, allowing the beach and dune to rebuild themselves within surprisingly short periods. Today, for example, the waterline at Popham Beach is more than 400 feet from the shower building.

This is no recent phenomenon. For a 2010 presentation on the Popham occurrence, a state geologist prepared a map showing the often-changing shoreline at the beach. The word “climate” does not appear in the presentation. Though this map demonstrates changes as long ago as 1980, historically, the changes date back decades further.

This geologist was Peter Slovinsky.

In 2010, Slovinsky studied a massive erosion problem at Popham Beach and concluded that, despite its enormous size and scope, it was simply nature taking its course. Thirteen years later, he observed much less dramatic changes on Chebeague Island, concluded that considerable erosion has occurred, and that “changing climate” and “increased storm events” are the cause.

Across the state, agreeable newspaper editors approved the story without even the most basic fact checking, and then published it despite the many obvious questions it should raise in the mind of someone with even a minimum level of intellectual curiosity.

Thus, the public is made aware of erosion that is not really erosion. In response, the media churns out another round of “evidence” that most of what ails us is the result of this terrible worldwide crisis from which only forceful government action can save us.

Watch carefully, because it is only a matter of time before Chebeague Island is used in some testimony or debate, justifying some harmful public policy in the name of protecting us from the “obvious” effects of climate change which has been agreed to by a “consensus” of scientists.