Kennebunk, ME Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 7 miles south of Kennebunk, ME
Good news, and an honest one: USGS's data can't distinguish this stretch, 7 miles south of Kennebunk, ME, from a flat trend. Whatever small movement it measured here is statistical noise, not a reliable direction, so none is claimed.
What this reading actually covers
USGS surveys the coast in transects spaced a few hundred feet apart; this page groups the nearest ones into a single ~3.5-mile reading for the stretch closest to Kennebunk, ME, rather than showing one arbitrary line. Segment center: 43.29, -70.58. Survey years: 2007-2009, method LRR, from USGS's New England / Mid-Atlantic shoreline-change assessment. That's how current the data is here, real, but not a live feed, since a shoreline survey is a major undertaking, not an annual check-in.
Where this fits nationally
43 transects feed this segment's number; 88% of them individually measured retreat. USGS's confidence interval here is ±0.17 ft/yr. The unadjusted figure here, -0.09 ft/yr, would place it 659 of 1211 if ranked directly - but an unreliable rank isn't a useful one, which is exactly why "no significant trend" is the headline instead. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. For scale: Provincetown, MA, 86 miles away, ranks 1129 of 1211 nationally for growth, 1.26 ft/yr. 1.7 miles up the coast, Cape Neddick, ME shows the same lack of a significant trend.
One address near Kennebunk: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.