Last winter as snow storms repeatedly pummeled the Seacoast region, South Berwick’s public works director watched as the town’s supply of road salt rapidly dwindled and the wear and tear on his road crews and their equipment increased.
By the end of the season, the Public Works Department had overspent its budget by over $40,000, the first time that has happened in at least eight years, according to Jay Redimarker, the department’s director.
To Redimarker, the reason behind the extra spending was clear. Climate change has made maintaining town roads more challenging and more costly.
“It’s easy to plow snow,” Redimarker said, but in recent years, due to climate change, winter storms have often brought ice that is much harder to control. “It puts a slippery glaze on the roads,” he noted.
Instead of sending trucks out once or twice during a storm to salt the roads, roads now have to be repeatedly salted to prevent a dangerous ice layer from building up.
The increased cost of maintaining town roads in the winter is one of several climate-related challenges town officials have highlighted in recent years.
In the summer of 2025 the Fire Department responded to several brush fires caused by drought conditions.
Stress on the town’s underground aquifers has raised concerns at the South Berwick Water District about the town’s water supply.
“The hazards that are facing communities like South Berwick are extreme storms and flooding,” said Karina Graeter, the Sustainability Division director at the Southern Maine Planning and Development Commission in Saco.
Another climate related risk Graeter points to is extreme heat in the summer. “Extreme temperatures are hard for people to deal with,” she said. “Especially older folks or kids or people with health conditions.”
In the late 1980s governments around the world began implementing programs to address climate change based on a scientific consensus that the earth is warming due to human activity, including the burning of fossil fuels.
However, it’s been only in the past few years that communities in southern York County have adopted plans to respond to climate change. The town of York formed a climate action committee in 2023. Kittery has had a climate committee since 2019.
Key comp plan recommendation sidelined
In South Berwick, threats posed by climate change, and possible ways to address them, are discussed in the town’s updated Comprehensive Plan adopted by the Town Council in 2024.
But the Town has not acted on one of the plan’s key recommendations, to “conduct a Climate Action Plan which addresses specific actions the community can pursue to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase sustainability and resilience to climate impacts.”
Even so, the Town has made efforts to respond to climate risks.
“We are trying to do things that are as green as possible,” said Interim Town Manager Jennifer Janelle. Energy efficient windows have been installed as part of the ongoing Town Hall renovation project.
The windows were paid for by a $75,000 grant the Town received from the Community Resilience Partnership, a state program South Berwick belongs to.
The Town also has an electric car for use by employees on official business, and solar panels on the roof of the South Berwick Public Library help offset the cost of heating and cooling the 140-year-old building.
Janelle and Jeff Brubaker, the town’s planner and community development director, agree that the development of a climate action plan is unlikely in the immediate future.
Transportation is a central climate issue
However, Brubaker argues that there are ways to include climate-friendly strategies in town projects. Brubaker recently left a similar position in Eliot, where he helped develop a Climate Change Vulnerability and Resilience Assessment that the town completed earlier this year.
He points to transportation as one area where South Berwick could make significant progress.
“As the community well knows, MDOT is soon going to install traffic signals at both the Punkintown Road-Route 236 intersection as well as the two intersections downtown,” Brubaker said, referring to the Maine Department of Transportation.
In addition to changing the experience of driving in town, Brubaker believes those projects can enhance the safety of alternate forms of transportation, especially cycling and walking, that have a lower environmental impact than cars.
But even if those kinds of improvements are made, transportation will remain one of South Berwick’s biggest climate challenges.
A report by the Maine Climate Council states that “transportation accounts for 49% of carbon emissions from fossil fuels in Maine, making it one of the most important opportunities to address climate change.”
Most of those emissions, according to the report, “come from the tailpipes of passenger cars and trucks as drivers travel long distances across our large, rural state.”
Alternatives to passenger cars and trucks are extremely limited in town. South Berwick has no public transportation. The one bus route that served the downtown area, COAST 100, was discontinued more than a year ago and the prospects for bringing it back are uncertain at best.
The town has no public electric vehicle charging station. And while the Eastern Trail bike route passes through South Berwick, there are no services for cyclists in town, such as a bike shop, or a bike-friendly cafe.
Despite these factors, town officials appear committed to addressing climate change, both its causes and ways to reduce its impact, while at the same time avoiding language that some might consider divisive around the issue of human-caused climate impacts.
According to Brubaker, it’s on the mind of planners, “even aspects where we don’t expressly mention climate change.”
