Sawyer Road, a flood-prone road linking part of Cape Elizabeth and Scarborough, will remain open, at least for now.

Cape Elizabeth’s Town Council voted against taking the first step in the road discontinuance process for a quarter-mile section of Sawyer Road (called Sawyer Street in Scarborough), effectively shutting down the joint $2 million marsh restoration and road removal effort that’s been talked about for years.

Scarborough approved the first step of the process 6-1 on the same night Cape Elizabeth squashed it. A public hearing is scheduled for early next month, but Scarborough Town Manager Tom Hall said it is very unlikely that the town will go through with the project without support from both communities.

“I don’t see any way it makes sense for us to go it alone,” Hall said.

Now, the towns will have to decide if they want to go back to the drawing board to reconsider solutions for this road or put it on the back burner.

Last year, the towns of Cape Elizabeth and Scarborough agreed to remove the portion of the road that crosses the Spurwink Marsh months after devastating storms rocked the coast, with the intention of creating turnarounds on each side. During intense storms and king tides, the street that bisects the marsh is prone to floods and becomes impassable.

“As climate impacts increase, you’ll see longer closures and more frequent closures where we just close the road four hours ahead of a high tide or a day ahead of a high tide,” Cape Elizabeth Town Manager Patrick Fox said at a recent council workshop.

Cape’s council voted to accept the $1.6 million Maine Natural Resources Conservation Program grant two years ago, and $90,000 of the funding has already been rolled out. Both Scarborough and Cape Elizabeth agreed to contribute nearly $200,000 to the project.

Fox said it’s too early in the process to say what the liability and legal ramifications could result from changing course.

In the terms of the grant, it is possible that the cooperating entities, or the town, would have to reimburse the agency for “its costs of enforcement and collection,” including attorney fees. The town’s staff is looking for how best to terminate or restructure the grant, and Fox said that the town has not spent more than the $185,000 it set aside for the project.

Hall said that if there’s any financial exposure because of the defeat of this project, the town of Scarborough expects Cape to cover the costs.

“It was their decision that doesn’t allow us to proceed,” Hall said.

Now, the towns will decide if and to what extent to consider alternatives for this road while also weighing growing infrastructure needs.

Both towns viewed removal as an economical option when they first floated the idea three years ago. Per environmental regulations, a new culvert would cost between $2.5 million and $5 million — and the road could still flood after the work is done. Building a bridge to cross this portion of the marsh would cost more than $10 million.

“It wouldn’t be a priority,” Hall said. He said that work for Sawyer Street would likely not make it on the five-year or even 10-year capital improvement plan.

A recent report identified more than 100 at-risk public roads in Scarborough, with 38 vulnerable to flooding at current sea levels and that number jumping to 62 by 2050. Based on criteria including public safety, environmental and economic impact as well as area covered, the report identified 30 priority roads for adaptation.

Sawyer Street was ranked sixth.

“All of these fixes will be multimillion-dollar projects,” Hall said. Adapting the five roads higher in the pecking order could cost the town as much as $10 million in total, and the town hasn’t identified any grant or state monies available to cover the cost of the culvert for Sawyer Street.

“We’re typically in a crisis mode,” he said.

“A culvert collapses, we replace that,” Hall said. “I suspect that’s what we’ll fall back to on Sawyer Street, keep limping along and close it as it floods. A day will come when it’s impassable.”

Cape Elizabeth also has its own infrastructure needs, some of which residents and councilors brought up at the recent meeting. Nearby roads, like Wells Road and Spurwink Avenue, could have experienced more traffic with the removal of Sawyer Road, exacerbating the safety risk of steep ledges and blind curves, according to Councilor Jonathan Sahrbeck.

And the town has 16 large culverts, most of which will need to be replaced within the decade, with cost ranging between $500,000 and $2 million depending on materials and need, according to Fox.

“There’s a lot for us to look into,” Fox said. “Many roads, many buildings and utility projects.” He said it will plan Sawyer Road into the replacement schedule as funds become available, with an understanding that the order of work could be reprioritized based on storms.

If Cape Elizabeth were to pursue a project upward of $1 million to adapt Sawyer Road, that decision would be sent to voters in the form of a referendum, required under the town’s charter.

Until there’s major work done, Fox said that the town can make some effort to make the road safer. He proposed a vehicle weight limit and installation of a safety barricade.

Because of the mounting costs of infrastructure work, some residents are concerned that the towns will opt to do nothing.

Elizabeth Hayes, who lives on Sawyer Road, said that she did a number of risk assessments in her decades-long career in banking, and she’s been thinking about this road in those terms.

“Kicking the can into the future is the No. 1 most risky scenario,” she said. Over the years, there are going to be additional repair needs that will cost the town money.

A minority of Cape Elizabeth’s councilors were disappointed by the decision to not initiate the removal process.

Councilor Elizabeth Scifres said the project aligned with four out of the council’s nine goals for the year: asset management and planning, environment, property tax relief and transportation safety.

“Whether we plan ahead and do this in the next few years or wait for a culvert failure, forcing a road closure, means raising taxes in Cape to pay for this,” Scifres said.

And she said that the climate action plan, which the council approved a month earlier, directs the body to make planned adjustments to known risks and adapt infrastructure to climate impacts and extreme weather.

“It’s ironic,” she said. “We unanimously accepted that, and here we are.”

In the recent months, as the process became closer to this official step, there has been an increase in public engagement on the issue.

“This road was more important to a lot of residents in Cape Elizabeth than perhaps was clear to staff and elected officials earlier in the process,” Fox said.

Council Chair Penny Jordan said she met with community members from all over town in advance of the vote.

“There were a number of people who came out at public forums who really did their homework,” Jordan said.

Town staff in both Scarborough and Cape Elizabeth are trying to figure out what to do next, wondering how this fits into a greater discussion of climate impact.

“If this is a harbinger of how these conversations are going to go on in the future, we have our work cut out for us,” said Liam Gallagher, assistant town manager in Scarborough. “Every vulnerable road can’t be saved.”