Living with Climate Change: Sea Level Rise

Living with Climate Change

Find out more about the briefings in this series below:

The Polar Vortex

Sea Level Rise

Wildfires

Extreme Heat

Integrating Equity into Emergency Management

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) invites you to watch a briefing on policies and practices to address sea level rise. Sea level rise is a unique challenge for coastal communities and for policymakers. How will impacts from sea level rise compound impacts from extreme storm events? What infrastructure and communities will be impacted over different time horizons? When should funding be allocated to rebuild or armor coastlines and what are alternative options? What are the strengths and limitations of nature-based solutions for coastal resilience to sea level rise?

Panelists discussed these questions and highlighted policy ideas and solutions that could start to shape a more robust U.S. response to sea level rise. 

This briefing is part of a series called Living with Climate Change that ran through July and focused on strategies, policies, and programs preparing communities around the country for four major climate threats: polar vortices, sea level rise, wildfires, extreme heat, and integrating equity into emergency management. 

The series ran in parallel with another briefing series, Scaling Up Innovation to Drive Down Emissions, covering hydrogen, direct air capture, offshore wind, electric vehicle infrastructure build-out, and how start-up accelerators can drive climate action.

Highlights

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

A 2020 Government Accountability Office report found that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had helped rebuild 45,000-50,000 homes between 2009-2019 following repetitive flood losses, and, at the same time, 64,101 properties became new repetitive flood loss properties. We are not doing enough to help property owners prevent repetitive flood loss. It is important to stop the number of repetitive flood loss properties from growing by using buyouts and not building new developments in flood-prone areas. The interagency 2022 Sea Level Rise Technical Report predicts that the United States should expect, on average, 10 to 12 inches of sea level rise by 2050 and most likely greater than two feet by 2100. There will be variability across coastal locations. In the next 30 years, there will be as much sea level rise as we have seen in the past century. Sea level rise has many legal impacts at the federal, state, and local levels. There are six main categories of legal issues related to sea level rise: property use, constitutional takings, insurance, water supplies, building codes, and public health. The White House published the Compendium of Federal Nature-Based Resources for Coastal Communities, States, Tribes, and Territories in April 2022, which outlines resilience resources from across more than 10 federal agencies.

 

U.S. Representative Kathy Castor (D-Fla.)

• Sea level rise is already disrupting coastal communities, including the Tampa Bay area on Florida’s west coast. This creates new and looming challenges because people want to live on the water, governments need to respond to impacted infrastructure, and there is pressure to rebuild after disaster strikes.
• The Congressional Climate Crisis Action Plan, released in 2020 by the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, made several recommendations to expand clean energy adoption and climate resilience, such as creating a national climate adaptation program, accelerating disaster recovery, and updating building codes and standards.
• The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (P.L. 117-58) includes $3.5 billion for flood mitigation assistance grants, $500 million for the new STORM Act revolving loan fund program, $17 billion to support the work of the Army Corps of Engineers, and a historic investment in the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant program.

 

Susan Ruffo, Co-Facilitator, Coastal Flood Resilience Project; Senior Advisor for Ocean and Climate, United Nations Foundation

• Sea level rise has two fundamental causes. Land-based glaciers and ice sheets are melting and that water is going into the ocean. Additionally, warming temperatures throughout the world are also warming the water and causing the expansion of its volume.
• Sea level rise can also combine with factors such as storms, land subsidence, and rainfall to impact coastal communities.
• The interagency 2022 Sea Level Rise Technical Report predicts that the United States should expect, on average, 10 to 12 inches of sea level rise by 2050 and most likely greater than two feet by 2100. There will be variability across coastal locations.
• In the next 30 years, there will be as much sea level rise as we have seen in the past century.
• One of the impacts of sea level rise is nuisance or high tide flooding.
• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report, The State of High Tide Flooding and Annual Outlook, finds that high tide floods are now twice as frequent as they were in 2000; in locations that experience these floods, they could occur up to 75 days of the year by 2050.
• Issues that will arise as a result of sea level rise include navigation challenges (e.g., bridges are no longer high enough for boats to fit under), coastal toxic waste sites becoming inundated with water, and vehicles and infrastructure being corroded by frequent saltwater flooding.

• How to address sea level rise:
  • Cut greenhouse gas emissions because today’s emissions dictate how much sea levels will rise in the future.
  • Understand the problem and provide resources to explain it.
  • Engage all coastal community stakeholders in responding to the geographically and socioeconomically differentiated impacts of sea level rise.
  • Incorporate this knowledge and engagement into future policies, plans, and development.
• The federal government has a number of policy levers to address sea level rise, including mitigating its impact on federal infrastructure, land, and investments; supporting other levels of government with incentives to ensure that they can build resilience through regulatory action, financial incentives, and research; and providing good information and data to spur action at a federal, state, and local level.
• The Coastal Flood Resilience Project has put together a National Policy Agenda for Rising Seas, which includes the following opportunities for federal action:
  • Disclose current and future risks of coastal flooding and sea level rise.
  • Improve disaster preparedness.
  • Limit new development in places at risk of storms and rising seas.
  • Build capacity to sustain coastal communities, homes, and businesses.
  • Adapt coastal infrastructure (i.e., transportation, energy, water, defense).
  • Promote migration of coastal ecosystems to higher ground.
  • Build commitment to social justice into coastal flood management plans and programs.

• Executive actions on sea level rise include implementing adaptation plans for all agencies, improving climate science, building resilience in all future investments and plans, revising cost/benefit methodologies, promoting nature-based solutions to coastal flooding, and making resources more accessible to vulnerable communities.
• Possible legislative actions include funding coastal resilience efforts, ensuring current policies like the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) and the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) address sea level rise, and integrating coastal resilience considerations across committees and bills.

 

Robin Craig, Robert C. Packard Trustee Chair in Law, University of Southern California Gould School of Law

• Sea level rise has many legal impacts at the federal, state, and local levels. There are six main categories of legal issues related to sea level rise: property use, constitutional takings, insurance, water supplies, building codes, and public health.
• Property use is generally dealt with at the state level but, at the federal level, property use can come into play with federally-owned properties. How federal entities decide to adapt their properties can either help or hinder the surrounding communities (e.g., an elevated access road could help everyone in the area, but a sea wall that increases wave action in neighboring properties would negatively impact them).
• At the state level, property use cases often have to do with sea walls. As one example, the California Court of Appeal upheld a California Coastal Commission order requiring the demolition of a seawall and a one million dollar fine for a homeowner who renovated their coastal home without notifying the California Coastal Commission. Different states think differently about coastal infrastructure projects on private property, but there is going to be more litigation as property owners want to build in ways that will be damaging to others.
• Constitutional takings are when private property owners sue when they cannot do what they want to do on their property. Property owners usually lose constitutional takings cases.
• In an eminent domain case relevant to constitutional takings, Borough of Harvey Cedars v. Karan, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that when calculating compensation for Karan’s loss of a view due to the borough’s beach renourishment and storm protection efforts, the court will also calculate the benefits received from those renourishments efforts; in the end, Karan’s compensation was one dollar.
• Insurance issues directly affect the federal government because of the National Flood Insurance Program, which provides flood insurance to at-risk homeowners.
• Repetitive loss properties are mostly found along coastlines impacted by sea level rise and they are bankrupting the National Flood Insurance Program. A possible solution is to turn insurance programs into government buyout programs that allow people to move away from dangerous coastal areas. Low-income communities and communities of color are often holding the riskiest properties and financial assistance to move to safer ground would be very important to them.
• Water supplies along the coast can be impacted by saltwater intrusion, when salt water enters into coastal aquifers or coastal rivers.
• Saltwater intrusion is happening throughout the United States, according to a 2020 Nature Communications article, “Groundwater Level Observations in 250,000 Coastal U.S. Wells Reveal Scope of Potential Seawater Intrusion.”
• Orange County, California, developed an infrastructure solution to address saltwater intrusion. They are injecting treated sewage treatment water into local groundwater. There is an injection well close to the ocean to protect the rest of the water from saltwater intrusion.
• Building codes can prevent a lot of damage and loss of life. Codes can be adopted that require homes to be built to standards sufficient to withstand high winds and hurricane impacts, for example. Building codes are adopted at the state and local level, but the federal government has a role in providing guidance on best practices.
• Public health is an underutilized area to leverage to increase resilience. Toxic hotspots and new diseases require public health law interventions such as those provided by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA, also known as the Superfund Act) and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).
• For example, Hurricane Harvey flooded waste treatment facilities, toxic release inventory sites, petroleum refineries, and natural gas processing facilities in Texas. This is highly problematic for water quality, land contamination, and air pollution. To mitigate this in the future, existing programs like Superfund could prioritize coastal sites for remediation.
• Many sewage treatment plants, especially those that are combined storm and wastewater treatment systems, are not designed to deal with current and future levels of flooding. Hurricane Michael overwhelmed sewage treatment plants in Florida, leading to the release of pathogens like E. coli, norovirus, and hepatitis A.
• The Coastal Zone Management Act can be used to improve land planning in coastal regions.

 

Lydia Olander, Director, Ecosystem Services Program, Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, Duke University

• Natural coastal habitats play a significant role in building resilience for coastal communities. Coastal marshes are also key for recreation and tourism. One third of U.S. adults participate in wetlands-based recreational activities. Recreational fishing supported 500,000 jobs, and coastal wetlands support more than half the commercial fishing industry through their nurseries. Wetlands provide coastal protection and carbon sequestration (carbon stored in coastal ecosystems is known as blue carbon).
• In response to sea level rise, coastal marshes can either accrete (grow vertically as water levels rise), migrate inland, or drown.
• According to a study of the impact of sea level rise on the mid-Atlantic coastal zone, researchers found that a vast majority of mid-Atlantic coastal marshes are predicted to drown, but there is significant potential for inland migration.
• There are a number of strategies that can be employed to enhance the resilience of coastal wetlands, including maintaining existing coastal marshes through thin-layer sediment placement and living shoreline development; preventing or slowing inland saltwater intrusion and marsh migration through the construction of berms and ditch water control structures; directing inland salt marsh migration by removing migration barriers like roads and protecting migration corridors; and limiting the negative impacts of saltwater intrusion and marsh migration by cutting timber before ghost forests emerge and finding new revenue streams from activities like hunting and fishing.
• Policies to enable resilience measures include simplifying permitting and providing funding to accelerate thin-layer sediment placement and living shoreline development; making agricultural easements and other U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service programs available to coastal projects; and utilizing federal buyouts to move people away from high-risk areas while creating new natural habitats that would help mitigate the impacts of climate change.
• The White House published the Compendium of Federal Nature-Based Resources for Coastal Communities, States, Tribes, and Territories in April 2022, which outlines resilience resources from across more than 10 federal agencies.
• In April 2022, Biden also signed an “Executive Order to Strengthen America’s Forests, Boost Wildfire Resilience, and Combat Global Deforestation,” which includes a section titled “Enlisting Nature in the Fight Against Climate Change.” This section outlines the America the Beautiful initiative; requests a report on how federal agencies can address barriers and move towards solutions related to nature; issues guidance on valuing nature; and calls for the first U.S. National Nature Assessment.

 

A.R. Siders, Assistant Professor, Disaster Research Center, Biden School of Public Policy and Administration, University of Delaware

• The litany of actions described in today’s briefing are not alternative paths. Rather, they all need to be pursued and, in some cases, pursued simultaneously.
• There are four main categories of coastal adaptation strategies:
  • Resist: holding the ocean back through sea walls, beach renourishment, dunes, and living shorelines.
  • Accommodate: letting the water come and go and taking steps like elevating homes to lessen the impact.
  • Retreat: relocating homes and infrastructure that are located near the coast to drier lands.
  • Avoid: not building in risk-prone areas.
• Managed retreat is the purposeful, planned, and often government-supported movement of people or assets to reduce hazard exposure. This is distinct from people displaced from a disaster or people who move on their own.
• The benefits of managed retreat include reducing disaster costs, protecting families, and creating space for healthy coasts.
• A 2020 Government Accountability Office report found that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had helped rebuild 45,000-50,000 homes between 2009-2019 following repetitive flood loss, and, at the same time, 64,101 properties became new repetitive flood loss properties. We are not doing enough to help property owners prevent repetitive flood loss. It is important to stop the number of repetitive flood loss properties from growing by using buyouts and not building new developments in flood-prone areas.
• In the last 10 years, 9,000 new homes have been built in New Jersey, Florida, and North Carolina alone that are in the 10-year flood plain, which means these homes have a 96 percent chance of flooding over a 30-year mortgage.
• There are homeowners who want to move instead of rebuild after a disaster, but they are not offered a buyout, which means their only option is to sell their home for a loss or stay in place.
• Retreat includes a suite of options, including, but not limited to, community relocation and buyouts.
• Community relocation is when a whole community relocates as a community. There are examples of such relocations in the United States, mostly involving riverine communities, and lessons learned from those communities can be applied to coastal communities.
• To better support community relocation, there is a need for government coordination. One option could be for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to house a coordinating office. The village of Valmeyer, Illinois, had to work with 25 different state and federal agencies in order to coordinate their community relocation.
• Community relocation would also be better supported with changes to the Fair Housing Act to support whole-community relocations.
• Buyouts are typically programs where the federal government provides funding to state and local governments to purchase homes from homeowners who have the final say as to whether they want to sell their home. The home is then physically moved or demolished, depending on the situation and current condition of the home.
• Buyouts have been used in every state in some capacity in the last 30 years, and they have been funded by federal agencies, including HUD, FEMA, USDA, the Army Corps of Engineers, and non-federal entities.
• Federal support for buyouts does not match the scale of demand right now.
• There are a number of steps that can be taken to improve the buyout program:
  • Provide more funding for buyouts because there are currently waitlists.
  • Provide funding faster. Estimates from the Natural Resources Defense Council are that buyouts take five years on average.
  • Ensure that funding is not tied to disasters because it creates perverse incentives for governments to buy out properties at certain times.
  • Build local and state capacity so communities have the bandwidth to apply for buyout funding. One way to do this would be to provide funding for additional state officers focused on buyouts.
  • Coordinate application processes and timelines across federal agencies.
  • Collect demographic data on who is applying for funds and who is receiving funds. This information would provide an understanding of the equity implications of funding dispersal.
  • Collect data on where people move after a buyout in order to enable program evaluation, especially to know if people moved to a safer area.
  • Allow greater flexibility in the buyout program in terms of how purchases take place. For example, buyout programs could support life estates, conservation acquisition, or a density development acquisition.
  • Offer “replacement cost” (i.e., what it will cost you to buy a comparable home outside the floodplain) rather than “fair market value.”
  • Encourage more affordable housing outside floodplains to enable relocation.
  • Provide funding to turn vacated land into something useful such as a wetland, living shoreline, or floodable community park.

 

Q&A

 

Q: How can federal policy be designed to accommodate the geographic differences in coastal use and the associated impacts of sea level rise?

Ruffo:

• The federal government can accommodate these differences by providing information on the physical differences in sea level rise impacts, using local academic institutions and community-generated information, and favoring programs that incentivize individualized coastal protection efforts instead of setting universal parameters.

Craig:

• The federal government has an important coordinating and streamlining role.
• The Coastal Zone Management Act is a program where states come up with plans for their coastal zones. It allows for flexibility based on local conditions while simultaneously providing nationwide standards.
• The federal government also plays an important role in technical assistance, funding certain state revolving funds, and new infrastructure funding.

Olander:

• Nature-based solutions need to be part of the coordinating and funding of programs to address sea level rise. They have often been left out.
• Community preferred alternatives should be incorporated across all programs from housing decisions to understanding important fishing locations.

Siders:

• The federal government should change the incentive structure so that communities are deterred from building expensive homes in floodplains and from focusing on short-term financial benefits.

 

Q: What steps need to be taken to design policy on sea level rise that is equitable and does not reproduce disproportionate impacts on vulnerable populations and communities?

Ruffo:

• Community participation, funding, and designing more useful program evaluation (i.e., the use of cost-benefit analysis) are all critical to policy design.

Craig:

• Regardless of the economics, the federal government’s priority should be to support predominantly poor and racially diverse communities that are already overburdened with toxics and diseases and that will otherwise be left with the least valuable properties and no way to move.

Olander:

• It is important to look at how communities can benefit rather than just how communities are harmed. Incorporating social and environmental benefits in the government's decision frameworks will improve outcomes.

Siders:

• People and communities should be prioritized over property value in adaptation and disaster policy.
• Addressing equity should be a starting point of policy, program, and project development instead of an afterthought.

 

Q: What are some of the barriers that are preventing more nature-based solutions from being implemented to address sea level rise?

Olander:

• Barriers include a lack of awareness, insufficient funding for nature-based projects or funding streams that are not set up right, a lack of standards, and a lack of programmatic infrastructure and staffing to implement nature-based solutions at scale.

Siders:

• Many local officials are unable to fit nature-based solutions into their cost-benefit analysis for funding applications.
• The University of Delaware’s Disaster Research Center research team sat down with local officials to try and figure out how to apply for federal funding for nature-based solutions, and they could not figure it out. This is a significant barrier.

Ruffo:

• Current tools are not able to value everything that nature is providing.
• Nature-based solutions should be taught in engineering school curriculums side-by- side with other coastal protection tools.

Craig:

• Coastal cities may not see room for nature-based solutions because the coast is so hardened.
• Nature-based solutions need to be decoupled from the Endangered Species Act in terms of how people think about opportunities to implement these solutions.

 

Compiled by Abi Shiva and edited for clarity and length. This is not a transcript.