Coastal infrastructure N.C. science panel begins updating sea level rise report

North Carolina officials announced last week that the state-appointed science panel supported by the Coastal Resources Commission (CRC) has begun updating a controversial 2010 sea-level rise report. The panel met recently in New Bern to discuss updates to the report, which preceded a highly debated draft sea-level rise policy which initially recommended that coastal communities prepare for one meter of sea-level rise by 2100.

Developers from coastal communities rejected the prediction, and soon enough got the panel to remove it from the draft policy. The state’s General Assembly, however, passed legislation ordering the CRC to further its study on sea-level rise. The legislation also placed a moratorium on the adoption of any official rates of sea-level rise for regulatory purposes until 2016.

The CRC oversees development in North Carolina’s twenty coastal counties.

In May, the CRC voted to narrow the scope of the pending report to reflect the effects of sea-level rise for the next thirty-years, as opposed to the original timeframe of 100 years. “I think the concept of doing it for 30 years will add credibility to the study,” Frank Gorham, the CRC’s chairman, said last Thursday. “People can think in 30-year timeframes.”

The Sun Journal confirms that the updated report will incorporate data from four coastal regions identified in the N.C. Beach and Inlet Management Plan. “There is an explicit mandate for us to spend considerable time with data that is North Carolina-based,” said Margery Overton, the science panel chair and professor of civil, construction, and environmental engineering at North Carolina State University. “It’s not as if we overlooked it in the first report, because we did report on those tidal gauges, but perhaps the communication of what we did not emphasize it so much.”

A draft of the updated report, once submitted to the CRC by the end of 2014, will be subject to a technical peer review team composed of Robert Dean, professor emeritus in the University of Florida’s coastal and oceanographic engineering program, and James Houston, formerly of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “They will review the report within three weeks and send their comments back to the science panel, who will respond to those comments,” said Tancred Miller, coastal and ocean policy manager for the Division of Coastal Management. “Then Drs. Houston and Dean will have one more shot to say whether the panel has addressed their comments.”

The CRC expects to receive the final report by the end of March 2015, followed by a public review which includes a public hearing and a comment period. The final report will be submitted to the General Assembly by 1 March 2016. “Everyone will have a chance to give their input,” Gorham said. “I think we are heading in the right direction.”