Coastal development risksDespite concerns, development still heads to the coast
Many scientists predict that by 2100, sea levels would rise more than one meter; still, Florida has opened more vulnerable areas along the Atlantic coast to construction — and has done so more than any other state
This may not be exactly like rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic, but still. As early as the 1980s, scientists warned that rising seas could submerge vast portions of Florida’s coast. How have local and state governments responded? By building more along the coast. A new study of development trends along the Atlantic Coast shows Florida has opened more vulnerable areas to construction than any other state. Three-quarters of its low-lying Atlantic coastline has already been, or will be, developed.
Miami Herald’s Curtis Morgan writes that despite mounting evidence of sea level rise, other states plan to follow Florida’s lead — though to lesser degrees — eventually pushing homes, condos, and other buildings onto nearly two-thirds of coastal land less than a meter above the Atlantic. By 2100 many scientists predict a rise near or beyond a meter.
Unlike some climate studies, however, this study divides the coast into rural or wild areas likely to be abandoned, and urbanized areas likely to be forced to employ ”increasingly ambitious” and expensive engineering to preserve real estate from encroaching ocean. Think dikes, levees, pumps, stilts, more dredging to rebuild eroded beaches, and mountains of fill to raise roads and structures. ”A map that shows Miami completely under water may not be as realistic as Miami subjected to a lot of shore protection measures,” said Jim Titus, the U.S. Environmental Protect Agency’s (EPA) project manager for sea-level rise and the primary author of the study published Tuesday in the journal Environmental Research Letters.
Co-author Daniel Trescott, a planner for the Southwest Florida Regional Planning Council, said the study is evidence that even as Congress debate how, and how much, to curb greenhouse gas emissions, it’s mostly ”business as usual” at ground level. Trescott said the study should spark planners and politicians to considering global warming impacts in land-use decisions because the protection costs, to land owners and taxpayers, will be huge. ”The thing that is hard to fathom is how are we going to be able to hold back the sea in a massive way in order to keep people at their current locations?” Trescott said. ”The reason we did this was to get people to start talking about what we are going to do.”
Last week, Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, and Monroe counties held a regional climate-change summit to begin sharing strategies. About 42 percent of the coast from Florida to Massachusetts is now considered developed. The study found that existing land-use plans envision ultimately filling upward of 60 percent of the coast, with most of the growth anticipated from Georgia to North Carolina.
Overall, the study found only 9 percent of the coastline has been set aside for conservation — wetlands that might help buffer impacts but that also would suffer massive environmental damage.
Florida was credited for having 13 percent of the coast in conservation, but that number is skewed because the study area included Monroe County, which includes all of Everglades National Park and wraps around to the Gulf. From Miami to Jacksonville, the only large stretch of undeveloped coast rests in the Canaveral National Seashore.
Three other Northeastern states — New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut — have developed a higher percentage of coast but Florida has roughly three times their length of shoreline.
William Nuckols, a Washington-D.C.-area environmental consultant and study co-author, said the EPA, which spent $2 million over seven years to support the study, sat on much of the information during the Bush administration, even removing elevation and planning maps from the agency report.
The authors, he said, decided to publish their own version of the study and maps in a peer-reviewed journal. Titus, once restricted by the Bush administration from talking to the media, opted to write and discuss the work under EPA rules that allow scientists to pursue outside independent research.
-read more in J. G. Titus et al., “State and Local Governments Plan for Development of Most Land Vulnerable to Rising Sea Level Along the U.S. Atlantic Coast,” Environmental Research Letters 4 (October-December 2009) 044008 (doi:10.1088/1748-9326/4/4/044008)
