Brownfields

Success Story

Wood Island Life Saving Station

Kittery Point, Maine

A small island off the coast of southern Maine that once hosted a lifesaving
station is being brought back to life as a museum to maritime history. The
Wood Island Museum will honor the early Coast Guard men who rowed out
in terrible storms to save mariners in distress more than 100 years ago,
providing a model for restoration that serves both the environment and the
past.

Priming the Property for Redevelopment

The State of Maine gave the one-acre Wood Island to the federal government in
the 1800s as a quarantine barrack. In 1908, the US Life Saving Service built a
lifesaving station there to help maritime vessels in distress. From this station,
the "surfmen" of Wood Island saved hundreds of lives in nearly 70 rescues. The
station is one of 12 remaining buildings in the US built in the Duluth
architectural style from Duluth, Minn.

In 1915, the Life Saving Service became part of the newly formed US Coast
Guard, and in 1941, the US Navy took over the station to watch for attacks from
Nazi submarines and protect the nearby Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. The Coast
Guard returned to their duty at Wood Island after the war, but the station was
decommissioned in 1948 and it remained unused for decades, slipping into poor
condition.

The federal government transferred ownership of the island and station to the
Town of Kittery in 1973. It remained unmaintained until 2009, when Kittery
began to examine options for the derelict building. The Town partnered with
the non-profit Wood Island Life Saving Station Association (WILSSA) to restore
the station and island into a maritime museum. In 2015, the building was
determined eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.

In 2010, the Southern Maine Planning and Development Commission
provided $9,000 in EPA grant funds to assess the level of contamination at
the station. The buildings were found to contain asbestos, bird waste, lead
paint, and plaster debris. An underground storage tank was also found
nearby.

&EPA

United States
Environmental Protection
Agency

Guards stand in front of Wood Island's Life Saving
Station restored building, (photo credit: WILSSA)

EPA Grant Recipient:

-	Town of Kittery

-	South Maine Planning and
Development Commission
Maine Department of Economic
and Community Development

Grant Types:

-	Assessment
Revolving Loan Fund
Cleanup

Former Uses:

U.S. Coast Guard Life Saving
Station

Planned Use:

Maritime museum

WOOD ISLAND
LIFESAVING STATION

KITTERY POINT • MAINE

Wood Island Life Saving Station Long View Perspective,
(photo credit: WILSSA)


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Clean-Up

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I II

I

L

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Wood Island's Life Saving Station 2nd floor restored,
(photo credit: WILSSA)

" Without EPA's faith
in our project, we
never would have
gotten started.

This is an excellent
example of the
power of the
Brownfields
program. Thank
you EPA! ^

Sam Reid
WILSSA President

The $6 million restoration, coordinated by Maine's Historic Preservation Office,
sets a national example of public-private partnerships and sustainable restoration.
The Town of Kittery received $200,000 in EPA funding for the cleanup in 2016.
Additionally, Maine's Department of Economic and Community Development
provided $58,000 from its EPA Brownfields Revolving Loan Fund program, the
National Park Service provided a $200,000 National Maritime Heritage grant, and
Maine's legislature voted to provide $200,000 for repairs.

Between 2018 and 2021, the Maine National Guard provided labor for
construction through its "Innovative Readiness Training" program. In 2018, it
trained 120 soldiers as they built the northern seawall, rebuilt the historic
shed, and installed temporary electrical and plumbing systems. The sea wall
was built two feet heigher than the original wall to address rising sea levels.
Other projects included restoring the southern sea wall and building ramps
for handicapped visitors.

Today

Recent additions to Wood Island include a new pier, a restored historic
marine railway, and a rare eight-oared boat from the 1930s, called the
Mervin Roberts, restored with a hidden electric engine that runs off solar
panels on Wood Island. The off-grid electrical system combines a 12-kw
diesel generator, mainly for winter use, with 2-kilowatt solar panels that can
run the electricity the rest of the year. Wood Island's small on-site
wastewater treatment plant, called the "Busse System," will recycle
rainwater and wastewater using the building's 5,000-gallon cistern from
1908. This innovative closed-loop system involved special permitting from
the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.

Between 2021 - 2023, WILSSA sponsored a wooden boat building class for 72
students from Traip Academy, the public high school in Kittery, all of whom
received full academic credits while building two identical wooden replicas of
the station's historic rowing boats. The new maritime museum is expected to
open in 2024, with space for corporate events and overnight visitors. Plans
are underway to allow daily visits from boat tour operators in Portsmouth,
NH. Wood Island will be one of only a dozen historically restored life-saving
stations open to the public, and organizers expect as many as 10,000 visitors
each summer. The maritime museum will educate future generations about
Wood Island's rich maritime history, the "surfmen" who risked their lives to
save others, and the national importance of this life saving station.

Then

March 2010

Phase 1
Assessment

September 2010

February 2017

Phase 2
Assessment

Cleanup
Complete

2023

Now

Redevelopment
Complete

For more information:

Visit the EPA Brownfields website at www.epa.gov/brownfields or contact
Dorrie Paar, 617-918-1432, paar.dorrie@epa.gov

EPA 901-A-18-003
October 2023

for informational use only - no endorsement intended


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