NEWRY – Fifteen feet of rapidly eroding riverbank is all that’s preventing the Sunday River from washing out a key section of its namesake road.

Provided the river doesn’t finish the job this spring, Newry will begin surveying and engineering work after snow melt and high water, using a $90,000 hazard mitigation grant it received Friday from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“Given the quick pace at which land is being lost, it is estimated the river will undermine the road in a few years, cutting off access to the upper Sunday River watershed,” project coordinator Jeff Stern stated Friday in a report.

The river closely parallels Sunday River Road, which is the only access route to residences, camps, logging sites and recreation in the river’s upper watershed.

The project will treat 400 feet of riverbank near the junction of Sunday River and Outward Bound roads, where large chunks of bare bank are caving into the river and toppling trees.

According to Stern, activities planned include:

• Installation of a series of rock vanes that will stick out into the river and deflect flows away from the eroding bank.

• Reshaping the cliff-like bank to a gentler grade that will support plant growth.

• Replanting bare areas.

• Placing large rocks intermixed with plantings at strategic spots along the bank and at the toe of the slope.

Regarding the grant, Newry must provide a 25-percent match of $27,114 and local administrative funds of $3,169 to FEMA’s 75 percent contribution of nearly $60,000, town Administrator Loretta Powers said by phone Wednesday afternoon.

In its grant application, Stern said the town calculated that 667 cubic yards of soil is washing into the river annually from the site opposite the road to the Hurricane Island Outward Bound wilderness school.

Erosion that began in the 1980s destabilized the river to the point where it began cutting new channels, threatening camps, homes, roads, and floodplain property. It also ruined the river’s fishery.

That prompted area residents to begin sharing growing concerns in the 1990s.

In 2000 and 2002, residents, businesses, town and county officials, and state personnel all conducted nonpoint-source pollution surveys in the river’s watershed. Widespread erosion was determined to be the major culprit behind the river’s destabilization.

The surveys led to several cooperative, erosion-control projects that were completed in 2003 in both the upper and lower Sunday River watersheds.

However, until now, there wasn’t enough money to fix the Sunday River-Outward Bound roads site, which was identified then as high priority.