Beach Erosion in Wells, Maine: A $5.1 Million Rebuild Built to Last Five Years

Four Beaches, Four Different Exposures

Wells Beach carries the town's main public infrastructure and its Mile Road commercial corridor — it is also the beach where the January 2024 storm did some of its most visible damage, and where the 2026 dune-rebuild project has now pumped in new sand. Drakes Island Beach, a smaller barrier-beach neighborhood, is the one with the longest paper trail of homeowner-reported erosion, discussed below. Crescent Beach, along Webhannet Drive near the harbor, was specifically named in 2024 storm coverage as a site of serious flood damage to homes. Moody Beach, running from Ogunquit Beach to Moody Point, is best known statewide for a 1989 Maine Supreme Judicial Court property-rights case that arose there — a legal fact worth knowing if you are researching Wells beach access generally, though it is a separate topic from the erosion and storm-damage history this page covers.

The January 2024 Storm: Wells Beach, Crescent Beach, and Webhannet Drive

Wells took some of the worst coastal storm damage of any Maine town in the January 2024 storm sequence. NewsCenter Maine's coverage specifically named Webhannet Drive and Crescent Beach-area homes as sites of serious property damage, corroborated by drone footage of flooded houses along that stretch. Separately, the Wells Police Department reported that Mile Road — Wells Beach's own central corridor — effectively became part of the Atlantic Ocean during the storm, closed with barriers until floodwaters receded. That storm sequence, part of the same broader event that also damaged Kennebunkport and Ogunquit, is the direct trigger for the York County-wide dune-rebuild project described below: countywide, the 2024 storms caused an estimated $40 million in public damage and destroyed or damaged 28% of dunes across four coastal segments.

An Older Pattern: What a 2015 Account Says About Wells Beach's Sand Loss

The 2024-2026 storm-and-rebuild story sits on top of a longer, older erosion pattern. A 2015 Portland Press Herald story, "Sand purchase puts focus on Wells Beach erosion," reported that, per then-state geologist Steve Dickson, Wells's beaches had historically lost roughly 1.2 million cubic yards of sediment. That loss was attributed to two specific mid-20th-century engineering projects: harbor-dredging operations between 1970 and 1974 that relocated an estimated 750,000 cubic yards of sand, and 1960s jetty construction that trapped roughly 500,000 cubic yards in accretion zones — areas where sand piled up but became legally difficult to redistribute back onto eroding stretches of beach.

The same 2015 account included one Drakes Island-area homeowner's report of a seawall that had been about six feet deep shrinking to about a foot and a half, alongside the loss of roughly 300 feet of dune and vegetation since 1990, attributed to successive winter storms. That is real, on-the-record testimony, and it is the closest thing on record connecting Drakes Island specifically to Wells's erosion problem. But it should not be read as more than what it is: one resident's account of general Wells-beach erosion conditions near Drakes Island, not a dedicated engineering study of Drakes Island's shoreline. The Maine Geological Survey does maintain a dedicated "Dune Geology - Drakes Island Beach, South, Wells" document, which would be the right place to look for an actual measured Drakes Island erosion rate — that document was not reviewed in full for this page, so no specific Drakes Island erosion-rate figure is stated here as confirmed fact. Anyone evaluating a Drakes Island property specifically should pull that Maine Geological Survey document directly rather than relying on the 2015 homeowner account alone.

The $5.1 Million Fix, and Why Officials Call It Only "The First" Phase

In response to the 2024 storm damage, York County launched a $5.1 million, three-project dune-rebuild initiative, funded through a mix of FEMA, Maine Emergency Management Agency, and municipal money. The exact split is reported two different ways across the source coverage — one account puts it at roughly 75% FEMA, 15% Maine Emergency Management Agency, and 10% municipalities, while another describes it as roughly 75% federal and 25% state-and-municipal — and this page notes both rather than presenting either as the single settled figure. Federal permitting delays pushed the actual dredging into January 2026, using York County's own sand dredge, originally purchased with American Rescue Plan Act funds. At Wells Beach specifically, crews pumped roughly 7,600 to 8,150 cubic yards of sand from Wells Harbor onto the storm-damaged beach through a pipeline running more than 2,000 feet, and SWCA Environmental Consulting planted more than 100,000 dune-grass seedlings between February 16 and February 20, 2026 to stabilize the new sand.

That is a substantial, real, currently completed piece of coastal infrastructure — but county officials have been explicit that it solves only part of the problem. The rebuilt dunes were engineered to a five-year flood-protection standard, not a full design life. York County Emergency Preparedness Coordinator Chris McCall and Emergency Management Director Arthur Cleaves have both been quoted describing the completed work as only "the first" phase, with a separate $50 million Phase 2 project — aimed at full 100-year flood protection — still seeking funding. A pending $75 million state coastal-resilience bond measure is one potential funding source for that second phase, but as of this writing it remains unfunded and its timeline is not fixed.

What This Means If You're Evaluating Property Here

The headline fact for a Wells Beach-area buyer is that the sand in front of the property you are looking at may well be brand new, five-year-rated protection rather than a mature, stable dune system — and that the county-level plan to get past that five-year window depends on a $50 million project that is not yet funded. That is a meaningfully different risk profile than a beach with a decades-old, fully engineered seawall. Layer onto that Wells's older pattern of jetty- and dredging-driven sand loss documented back in 2015, and the fact that Drakes Island in particular has homeowner-level erosion complaints on record without a confirmed engineering study backing a specific erosion rate. Wells participates in the National Flood Insurance Program and maintains its own floodplain-management ordinance, but this research did not obtain a parcel-level breakdown of how much of Wells's floodplain falls in FEMA's Zone VE — the coastal high-hazard zone requiring pile-supported construction — versus the broader Zone AE. Maine's statewide Mandatory Shoreland Zoning Act also applies to any Wells parcel near the water, governing setbacks and vegetation clearing, though this page did not extract Wells's specific local setback distances — check Wells's own ordinance on eCode360 and Maine's Department of Environmental Protection directly for parcel-specific setback rules. Before buying near Wells Beach, Drakes Island, Crescent Beach, or Moody Beach, ask directly which phase of dune or seawall protection (if any) sits in front of a specific parcel, what FEMA flood zone that parcel falls in, and whether the York County Phase 2 funding has been secured by the time you are evaluating the property. None of this is engineering, insurance, or real estate advice. For a property-specific determination, consult FEMA's Flood Map Service Center at msc.fema.gov, the Town of Wells's own floodplain-management office, York County's Emergency Management office, and a licensed coastal engineer before making a purchase decision.