Cape Neddick, ME Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 2.9 miles northeast of Cape Neddick, ME
The coast 2.9 miles northeast of Cape Neddick, ME has been retreating at a measured 0.26 feet a year, USGS's own long-term rate for this stretch, built from historical shoreline positions rather than a single survey. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 2.6 feet over the last decade.
What "Cape Neddick" means on this page
This is a roughly 3.5-mile stretch of coast, not one address or parcel - USGS's own transects run every few hundred feet, but that's finer than any one property needs, so this page reports the stretch nearest Cape Neddick, ME. Centered near 43.21°N, 70.59°W. The survey behind it runs to 2007-2009, in USGS's New England / Mid-Atlantic assessment, using the LRR method. Shoreline surveys aren't repeated every year, so this is the most recent long-term measurement USGS has published for this coast, not a live reading.
25 years at this rate
If 0.26 ft/yr holds for the next 25 years, the coast 2.9 miles northeast of Cape Neddick, ME would retreat roughly 7 more feet, a projection, not a certainty: erosion rates shift with storms, sediment supply and any armoring built in the meantime.
What backs this reading up
Averaging 3 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 100% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.18 ft/yr. This segment ranks 433 of 1211 measured US coastal segments, ordered from fastest erosion to fastest growth. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. Rank 260 nationally for erosion belongs to Matagorda, TX, 1721 miles from this stretch, measured at 0.61 ft/yr, 2.3x this stretch's rate. 2.9 miles up the coast, Cape Neddick, ME shows the same lack of a significant trend.
Not this whole stretch, just Cape Neddick itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.