A main route through the town of Penobscot will be closed for up to four weeks starting on April 20 for work on a new culvert and raised road over a tidal marsh that’s prone to storm flooding.
The closure of Route 175, also known as Bayview Road, over Mill Creek near Hutchins Cove will leave drivers, school buses and emergency services with an extensive detour of more than 20 miles, or 30 minutes, to get from one side of Northern Bay to the other. Traffic will be re-routed north — along either Rt. 166 or Rt. 199, depending on direction — through the neighboring town of Orland and then back south again.
“This will be a significant inconvenience for some residents, and we don’t take that lightly,”
Select Board Chair Harold Hatch said in a statement. “But this short-term disruption will give us a safer, longer-lasting roadway and a healthier stream and marsh system. It’s an investment in the town’s future.”
The project should let the tide move freely under the road, improve fish and wildlife passage and help the road withstand storms, according to town officials. It’s also part of a yearslong effort across multiple projects to improve alewife passage in Penobscot, which had its first commercial harvest in decades last year.
The project will replace a failing granite culvert with a larger new concrete structure and raise a portion of the road, which was closed in January 2024 when back-to-back storms flooded it. It’s fully funded by more than a million dollars in state and federal grants, and town officials said it is an example of a major infrastructure project a small town couldn’t fund by itself.
Preparing for the closure required a lot of coordination from residents, neighboring towns, first responders, schools and others, according to the select board. It was initially planned to take place in March.
The project got a one-month extension to the work window for projects in Maine’s tidal waters, which typically runs from Nov. 15 to April 15 to limit disruption of fish and wildlife habitat, according to Robert Blunt, a project manager from engineering firm VHB. The road may also be repaved during the closure.