4.4 Celebrating Two Years of Coastal Resilience Solutions at EESI!

October 26, 2022 marks the two-year anniversary of EESI’s comprehensive report called A Resilient Future for Coastal Communities. This report is a guidebook for policymakers on coastal resilience, featuring policy recommendations, guiding principles, case studies from across the country, and so much more. To mark this anniversary, Dan and Emma speak with Shana Udvardy, Senior Climate Resilience Policy Analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, to learn about how the climate of the present is affecting our coasts, what the big climate bills in the United States mean for coastal communities, and some examples of coastal resilience in action.

Show notes:

A Resilient Future for Coastal Communities report

Regional coastal resilience briefing series

Sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions, for insight on the latest innovative climate solutions and environmental policy in action.

Follow us on social media @eesionline

About this Podcast:

With all the depressing climate news out there, it’s sometimes hard to see progress. The Climate Conversation cuts through the noise and presents you with relevant climate change solutions happening on the Hill and in communities around the United States.

Twice a month, join Environmental and Energy Study Institute staff members as they interview environmental, energy, and policy experts on practical, on-the-ground work that communities, companies, and governments are doing to address climate change.

Whether you want to learn more about the solutions to climate change, are an expert in environmental issues, or are a policy professional, this podcast is for you.

The Climate Conversation is published as a supplement to our bi-weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions.

Episode Transcript:

Dan Bresette: Hello and welcome to The Climate Conversation. I'm Dan Bresette, Executive Director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. And with me, as always, is communications associate Emma Johnson, my intrepid cohost. I'm in a particularly happy mood today, Emma. And do you know why?

Emma Johnson: I do, Dan, but I think you should be the one to tell our listeners why!

Dan: Well, Emma, it's because this podcast episode commemorates the two-year anniversary of the release of our report, A Resilient Future for Coastal Communities. Many coastal communities have been working on adapting to climate change for many years. And in 2019, EESI recognized the need to educate policymakers about the work going on in these communities, and what they've managed to accomplish so far. And so, over the course of about a year, we organized and hosted 16 in-person and online Congressional briefings, which featured 42 coastal resilience experts from all across the country. Now, in addition to the two-year anniversary of the report, I'm just barely past my three-year anniversary at EESI. And so some of the first briefings I worked on at EESI are part of this coastal resilience briefing series. And I remember very, very clearly, at one of the briefings, I think it was the West Coast briefing, which was in December 2019, I remember thinking to myself, there are so many more people who need this information than who are sitting in the room right now. And we had good turnout that day, too. But I was thinking, how do we get this information to policymaker audiences that aren't with us today? How do we get this information to staff people who don't even work on Capitol Hill yet, but that will someday be working on these policies? Yes, of course, we post the archived webcast and the presentation materials. But I thought we needed something a little bit more than that. Because the quality of these briefings, the experts, the perspectives, the diversity of the panelists, you name it. This was a real high point in the history of EESI briefings, which is littered with high points. So that's what led us to come up with this idea of this coastal resilience report. And we gave ourselves the better part of 2020 to pull it all together.

Emma: This comprehensive coastal resilience report is organized into six major sections that cover land use, cultural heritage, climate data, disaster preparedness, financing climate projects, and community stories. And the report also includes 30 specific recommendations and six guiding principles intended to inform the implementation of coastal resilience policy for all those policymakers, current and future that you're just talking about, Dan.

Dan: Yes, absolutely. There is so much great work in the report. Now, a lot of the report is this compilation of all of these incredible insights, recommendations and findings that came up over the course of these briefings, thanks to our 42 coastal resilience experts. But this is also probably the time to acknowledge that it was the result of a lot of work, a very robust research methodology. And so in addition to me, I had a small part to play, but our colleagues Anna McGinn and our former colleagues, Amber Todoroff, Sydney O'Shaughnessy, and Ellen Vaughn, in particular, put a lot of lot of really hard work into putting this all together. So what's the end result? Emma just described the report, and I encourage everyone to visit us online www.eesi.org/initiatives, check it out. If you happen to be a policymaker, and particular a Congressional staff person listening to the podcast today, the report is really designed with you in mind. And in addition to those findings, and principles and recommendations and all of that. It's also organized according to federal policy lever, it's organized thematically. So if you have a question about climate finance, for example, there are appendices to help you get to the information in the case studies. The case studies in particular, I think, are extremely useful as illustrative examples of how these coastal resilience efforts are underway in states. And that was really the theme of the entire briefing that communities, states are really out in front doing some really, really incredible work. So I definitely encourage everyone to take a look at the report. And because you'll like the report so much, then you have to go back and watch all 16 in-person and online Congressional briefings which are of course, archived on the EESI website.

Emma: We will be diving into some of the topics in the report on this episode with Shana Udvardy, who is a senior climate resilience policy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. She's also a member expert with the Coastal Flood Resilience Project, or CFRP, which is a coalition of nonprofits working for stronger national programs to prepare for coastal storm flooding and rising sea levels along the coast of the United States. EESI is a partner organization with CFRP and one of their co-facilitators, Susan Ruffo, was a panelist in our sea level rise briefing in May. We are excited to have another expert from the group join us for this episode. Shana, welcome to the show.

Shana Udvardy: Thank you so much. It's great to be with you.

Dan: As Emma mentioned at the beginning of this episode, we included six guiding policy principles in our Resilient Future for Coastal Communities report. And one of those principles was making sure that federal policies are designed based on the climate of the future, not the climate of the past or present. Can you share some of the latest science for how climate change is both currently affecting and predicted to continue to affect our coastlines?

Shana: Sure, thank you for the question. I think this is just so critical. So I'll focus on the slow moving climate disaster, which is sea level rise. And I'd like to start with our own scientific analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists on sea level rise called Underwater. And in this analysis, we use Zillow data and looked at the number of homes and businesses nationally, that could be at risk of chronic flooding. And we found that by the end of the century, the value of those properties based on 2018 values was totals more than 1 trillion. So that's really mind blowing when you think about it. We have many more findings and resources, especially a very cool mapping tool which goes down to the zip code level. So I really encourage people to go and take a look at this analysis. And you can do that by going to www.ucsusa.org/resources/underwater. But more recently is some new data analysis that came out from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric agency, or NOAA. It's a recently released report and a multi-agency analysis with most up-to-date sea level rise projections. And it's the most up-to-date since 2017. So really, this is the latest data, it covers all of the United States and territories, and it offers projections out to the year 2150. And they have four key takeaways. The first is that we're projected to see over the next 30 years, sea level to rise an average 10 to 12 inches, roughly a foot. And what I want to underscore and what they underscore is that this is the same amount of rise measured over the last 100 years. So this is telling us that sea level rise is coming faster than the past. And I do also want to note that the rise will vary regionally due to many different circumstances like the difference in land and ocean elevations. Second, the authors note that the sea level rise will cause a profound shift in coastal flooding within a 30-year timeframe or in the timeframe of an average mortgage. So we'll see tides and storm surge heights increase and reaching further inland. Third, the report also points out that whatever we can do now to reduce heat trapping emissions will make a difference. And this I'm so happy to see because for many years past, we haven't seen federal agencies really make the point about needing to reduce emissions. And so what they said is, by the end of the century, we'll see about two feet of sea level rise on average. But if we fail to curb emissions, we could see an additional rise of anywhere between 1.5 to five feet, which means a total of 3.5 to seven feet by the end of the century. So think about that, that's over five feet of rise on average. Finally, the report makes the point that all levels of government need to continually track how sea level rise is changing in order to help inform their adaptation plans. And moving beyond sea level rise, I'd like to note that, as many of us know, warmer air holds more moisture. So climate change is contributing to heavier rainfalls, and hurricanes that are releasing a lot more rainfall over a longer period of time. So storm surge is going to increasingly intensify because it brings more water further inland due to sea level rise.

Emma: Thanks for breaking that down for us, Shana, there's so much to consider and those reports are really important, and we'll be sure to link to them on our website. So a real theme of our report is that for coastal resilience projects to be successful, everyone needs to be involved from community members to state governments to tribal members to federal agencies and everyone in between. Can you explain why it is so crucial that all these people are involved in coastal resilience projects in order for them to be successful?

Shana: Sure, I want to start by really bringing a theme across that, we need to understand that climate change and coastal resilience touch on all sectors. So it's systemic. When we think about it, we usually think about it as an environmental issue. But that's really outdated. The way we really need to think about it is that it touches on all aspects of life, on how well we produce food, the availability of drinking water, whether we can keep our lights on during a storm, and even new analysis indicates that it can delay retirement do the cost of repairing homes after disaster. So those are just a few examples. But that's why we need all levels of government to really be involved. Second, is we need all of these levels of government to support environmental justice. This is an issue that the White House environmental justice groups, our organization, among many others are working on to ensure resources are focused on historically disadvantaged communities, including Black, Latinx, Indigenous and low-income communities. The good news is the Biden administration created the Justice40 program. This is a program which has a goal to have communities that are marked marginalized, underserved and overburdened by pollution to receive 40% of certain federal funding programs. And finally, I wanted to mention that given that the cost of resilience is going to be expensive so that’s why it’s critical for all levels of government to come together. So communities are going to need to be creative. And that means looking at multiple financial opportunities to fund things like buyouts or moving people out of harm's way or planning and designing for adaptation projects. And many communities will not have these resources to submit an application even for federal or state grants. So these communities are going to need to be better equipped by receiving some technical assistance from federal agencies and state agencies in order to leapfrog to get grants. And they can also work on pushing state and federal governments to do things such as establishing an infrastructure or Green Bank, or things like revolving loan funds or financial mechanisms. And then another way I wanted to end with on this front is one way a low-resource community can gain support is by following an example of the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact, which was established in 2009. And this includes a handful of Southeast Florida counties, including Miami Dade, Broward, Monroe, and Palm Beach counties that agreed to work under one umbrella to mitigate the causes and adapt to the consequences of climate change.

Dan: Shana, my first question to you asked, you know, how should we think differently about the climate of the future compared to the climate of the past and the climate of the present? I'd like to spend a few minutes in the present, the climate present, that is, and we've seen some really, really stark evidence of what our climate present looks like with Hurricane Ian, which recently tore through Florida at the end of September. And a few weeks before that, Hurricane Fiona struck Puerto Rico and wreaked havoc on its electric grid and infrastructure. Back in 2020. In our coastal resilience briefing series that we held in the lead up to our report, we discussed resilience and recovery efforts in Puerto Rico, sort of trying to go hand in hand or how they should go hand in hand. And that was in the wake of Hurricane Maria. In the years since Hurricane Maria and the week since Hurricane Fiona. What stands out to you as issues that still needs to be adequately addressed and actions that still needs to be urgently taken? And specifically, what steps can the federal government be taking? What do they need to be taking to improve disaster preparedness, especially to support disadvantaged communities in Puerto Rico, Florida and other frontline areas?

Shana: So I think there are quite a few lessons we need to learn from Hurricane Ian and maybe we need to re-learn them again. And this is first about evacuation orders. There was a great New York Times piece that showed that some counties and particularly Lee County did not give people enough time to evacuate. And while other neighboring counties issued evacuation orders the Monday before Hurricane Ian landed, Lee County waited too long. NOAA projected on Monday that the storm would hit on Wednesday and that Lee County would see four to seven feet of storm surge. That's enough information to issue an evacuation notice. However, they waited until Tuesday and the storm surge was updated to estimated amounts of five to 10. Second, many communities outside of the evacuation area and outside of the path of hurricane and were flooded. And this is due to the fact that rivers were getting a lot of rainfall and overflowing. So many unsuspecting communities in the central part of Florida were flooded. Third, there was a lot of damage to homes and buildings due to outdated building codes. However, while this is true, Florida has been one state that has been more proactive than others on this issue. And that's due to some of the hurricanes like Hurricane Andrew in 1992, when the state was above and beyond many others, and updating their building codes, and then also after a storm hit in 2007. And so we know that there was one town that particularly was better off than others, and that's Punta Gorda, and they had the latest building codes, and really were able to save many of the structures in harm's way. Another lesson is that people are really starting to grasp that climate change is really fueling extreme storms, especially when it comes to hurricanes, that they're becoming more catastrophic. For this latest storm Ian, there were mind blowing storm surge projections of 18 feet in places like Charlotte Harbor in southwest Florida. And so this is really different kinds of storms than we're used to seeing. And we know that science by the State University of New York and Stony Brook found that climate change infused Ian with 10% more rain. So this means we need to really think about adaptation differently. It's not business as usual, we need to think about the earlier question about how we can get all levels of government to come together to respond. And we really need to remember that resilience means both adaptation and mitigation. So mitigation to reduce the heat trapping emissions and stop making things worse, right. And so for example, from Hurricane Ian, we can we can look at one neighborhood, located on a northern tip of Lee County that actually managed to keep their electricity flowing throughout the storm. And why is that? It was powered by 100% solar energy. So that's super cool. And it's really gets back to, you know, how we can be more resilient with both adaptation and mitigation. Regarding Puerto Rico, this is a very unique area and a unique set of challenges that Puerto Rico has been facing for quite some time. And a lot of it is due to colonialism and how the island and local communities don't really have a place to be in charge of their own land area. And the one thing that I point out for Puerto Rico is really the lack of resilient energy infrastructure. And this is unfortunate, because private companies are in charge. And there's a lot of bureaucratic obstacles in the way. And so one of the ways we like to think about it is how can we get the local communities better in charge of improving that resilience of the infrastructure there in Puerto Rico. So as you know, right now, they are still working on getting energy infrastructure improved. Some people are still keeping their lights on through their own means, whether it's their own little solar power, or other types of things. But it's an area that we really want to see some renewable, resilient infrastructure, things like microgrids, things like solar and wind power, that will really help them be more resilient after a storm.

Dan: President Biden signed into law two pretty significant pieces of legislation last November, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and more recently, just in August, the Inflation Reduction Act, what are the funding resources provided by those pieces of legislation that that you think could have the most positive impact in improving resilience and climate adaptation in coastal areas? What should we be particularly excited about in those areas?

Shana: Oh, excellent question. I like this. The first I’ll mention is the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, or what our policy wonks like to say is IIJA as an acronym, so this was a record investment of $47 billion for resilience. And I'll just point out three areas. The first is that provides badly needed investments in flood resilience, including investing in really outdated flood mapping, in addition to providing an investment in flood insurance affordability. We know so many people that are hit by these back to back storms can't afford flood insurance. So this has been something that a lot of organizations like mine had been pushing for some time. So really happy to see that. Next it invests in hazard mitigation. And this is in a way of loans and grants for state, tribal and territorial governments, as well as upgrading extreme weather warnings. And it provides millions of dollars to increase the resilience of water supply, stormwater, septic, and other wastewater facilities really getting at that resilience of infrastructure that is so important to communities. Finally, it invests in climate science for NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric agency, to increase the predictive and forecasting capabilities of weather and climate events. With the Inflation Reduction Act, I can speak to five main areas for resilience. But this was a huge win for climate change. And that's because it really works to put money towards policies and other resources to reduce emissions. Policies such as clean energy tax credits, and clean energy financing. So this was a little bit less about resilience. But it does have some really cool areas. The first I'll mention is it has environmental and climate justice block grants. So this is really getting the money towards the people that need it most. It also invests in agriculture conservation programs, forest restoration and conservation, and I was really happy to see the tribal climate resilience funding there. And just two more I'll mention is there's funding for the U.S. Geological Service to continue to elevate their three-dimensional elevation programs. This is so critical to ensuring accurate mapping, specifically flood mapping. And then finally, it invests in NOAA’s coastal communities and climate resilience programs that have been just so important for increasing coastal resilience. What I'm particularly excited about is that, first of all, in both of the bills, there's real funding for increasing resilience. And with the IRA bill, there's funding to really gain ground on reducing emissions. And in order to truly work towards being resilient on climate change, we need to stop making it worse. And that's why the IRA bill is so critical to help get a grasp on reducing heat trapping emissions.

Emma: Thanks, Shana. Bringing it back more towards our report that we've been talking about. We featured in that a lot of stories from communities across the country, including in California, Michigan, Louisiana, Massachusetts, and many other states that have already made great strides in advancing coastal resilience projects. What is the success story that you can share with our listeners about coastal resilience in action?

Shana: I want to give a few different examples, one that focuses on planning, another on data and modeling, and then finally one that really are focused on nature-based solutions. The first one is from Virginia Beach on planning. This is one example that we both recognize as a success story for their work on their adaptation strategy to sea level rise. And one of the strategies that I'm particularly happy to see in their plan is their regulation that requires responsible siting, design, and construction practices. They've done this by zoning land into four categories. One is strategic growth. The second is development in areas where development is encouraged. Third is where there's regulated development, and then finally the areas that development is restricted. And so restricting development and hazardous coastal areas is so critical to keeping communities safe and to restoring and conserving ecosystem benefits. So it's a win-win solution. And as we know, zoning is in the hands of local governments, so we really need more proactive zoning, like what Virginia Beach is doing, which will give citizens multiple benefits, not least as the storm surge in flood protections. The second I want to mention is a tool that I just love. And that's a data modeling tool from Rhode Island in which they develop to encourage development out of harm's way, including better building codes. And this is called the shoreline change special area management plan, or SAMP, and it provides information guidance and a suite of tools to help empower state and local decision makers on how to plan and recover from coastal storms. Specifically what it has is this tool that can help applicants that want to develop land in coastal areas understand the hazards over projected climate change. And the thought is, is that if an applicant goes through this process, they can understand the class of the hazards in these areas and hopefully either limit the building or make sure at least the building is built to last. And then finally one area that I love, I love nature-based solutions. And so this is the Staten Island living breakwaters project. It is one of the responses to how hard New York and New Jersey were hit from Hurricane Sandy in 2012. So it was part of the living breakwaters project. This was a project through rebuild by design competition that was created by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development or HUD to reduce waves and prevent erosion. So Staten Island used oyster reefs and oyster restoration nurseries to provide storm surge protection and erosion protection from the oyster reefs, and from an oyster nursery, which can help clean and restore biodiversity.

Dan: Thank you so much for joining us today. And helping us look back at our coastal resilience report from just about two years ago. It doesn't seem like that's possible, but it really was about two years ago.

Shana: Thank you so much.

Dan: Once again, an amazing expert is incredibly generous with her time to share all of these great examples and insights and perspectives on issues of coastal resilience. And, you know, we've come a long way in last couple years. Right. We talked about IGA. We talked about inflation Reduction Act, we talked about justice 40. But still, there's so much left to do, as unfortunately, hurricanes Fiona and Ian helped demonstrate to us in the very, very recent past, and you weren't at EESI when we did the briefing series, you weren't part of our communications team, when the report was coming together. What struck you from what you've learned about it so far, and what Shawn was able to share with us today?

Emma: Well, Dan, I always enjoy hearing and reading stories about coastal resilience work that's happening in communities. That's always my favorite part to see the case studies. And so our coastal resilience report is full of solutions full of these case studies, with places happening around the country. And I also really liked hearing Shana describe the different projects that are happening around the country from planning in Virginia Beach, to living shorelines and Staten Island. So that was really exciting to hear about that from her. And I also was really thrilled to hear her say that coastal resilience is more than just the environment. It's about every sector of our life and every sector of our government and touches, everything that we do. And thinking about these problems with that big frame in mind will be better because it can make every aspect of our lives better too. So that was all really exciting to me. And so if you also found that really exciting and you want to learn more about EESI 's work on coastal resilience, you should head to our website eesi.org. Also follow us on social media at @eesonline for all of our recent updates. The climate conversation is published as a supplement to our bi-weekly newsletter Climate Change Solutions, go to eesi.org/signup to subscribe. Thanks for joining us and see you next time.