PORTLAND – Towns in York County have reported public infrastructure damage of about $7 million from the recent flooding and incessant rains.

Twenty-two York County municipalities had turned in forms by Thursday morning reporting damage to public infrastructure such as roads, bridges and sewers, Maine Emergency Management officials said.

The hardest-hit town was Wells, which reported $2.4 million in damage. York and Ogunquit each reported damage of about $1.3 million. The totals do not include damage to private property.

The damage estimate far surpasses the federal threshold of about $1.4 million to receive a disaster declaration to make the affected areas eligible for federal assistance. A disaster declaration request was in the works and the governor was expected to sign it this week, a spokesman said.

The damage is extensive, Charlie Jacobs of the Maine Emergency Management Agency said during a telephone briefing Thursday. By comparison, the flooding in Canton in December 2003 caused about $1.5 million in public damage.

“I would definitely say it’s significant,” Jacobs said.

When the federal government declares a disaster, it provides 75 percent of the funding for repairs. State and local governments pay for the remaining 25 percent.

The damage evaluations will continue Friday when four Federal Emergency Management Agency teams canvass York County for a formal preliminary damage assessment.

A number of roads and at least four bridges remain closed from damage caused by the storm, which dumped more than a foot of rain on parts of York County during a multiple-day stretch that ended last week. The Cape Neddick area of York got more than 15 inches, according to the National Weather Service.

The NWS posted a flood watch covering southern and western Maine for Friday and Friday night.

A cold front approaching from the west combined with a coastal storm moving up from the south was expected to bring rain to most of the region.

Gov. John Baldacci planned to meet with local, state and federal officials on Friday at the York County Community College in Wells.

Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, Gov. Mitt Romney took his first aerial tour of areas ravaged by flood Thursday, seeing pockets of destruction where neighborhoods remain uninhabitable but more widespread and encouraging signs in the moving traffic, outdoor track meets and people golfing.

“The damage seems to be clustered by neighborhood. It’s not broadly spread across entire cities,” Romney said after he surveyed northeastern Massachusetts in a UH-60 Army Black Hawk helicopter.

The flight began over the North Shore, where flooding has kept some streets still closed, but receded enough to allow Peabody Square to reopen. Flying across Beverly and Topsfield, the effects of nearly a week’s worth of rain were more apparent.

Utility rights of way and swamps were swollen, whitewater meandered through some streams and brooks, and farm fields and backyards were flooded.

Over Newburyport, where the Merrimack River empties into the Atlantic Ocean, broken docks were visible along the riverbanks. Over Amesbury, the governor saw the Powow River careening right and left through downtown, sections of street still blocked off by temporary orange fencing.

Flying west over Haverhill, Lawrence and Lowell, the Merrimack and Spickett rivers still raged, but the floodwaters had receded from the Mary Immaculate nursing home in Lawrence, where only two days earlier Romney had witnessed the removal of 243 elderly patients after the basement and first floors flooded.

Overall, what Romney saw was how quickly life had returned to normal in most of the region, even though areas of destruction remained. There were no widespread scenes of disaster as there were on the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina.

“On the ground, you see the experience of the individuals, and people have been badly hurt by this in many, many cases, and you know the heart-wrenching loss of memorabilia, of furniture, of clothes,” Romney said. “From the air, you don’t see the emotion that you feel when you’re right there.”

In New Hampshire, where days of heavy rains washed out hundreds of roads, prompted thousands of evacuations, and flooded numerous homes, Gov. John Lynch toured four flood-stricken towns Wednesday.

He said the state’s swift response to this week’s floods owes much to lessons learned during flooding that claimed seven lives in southwestern New Hampshire last year. No deaths have been reported in the state from the recent round of flooding.