Adaptation and Resilience

6.3 Policy Approaches for Building Resilience against Sea Level Rise in Coastal Communities

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October 3, 2023

         

 

Idyllic water views may be great for tourists, but for homeowners and residents of coastal communities, they can be a foreboding red flag. With each passing year, the climate crisis brings more extreme storms, storm surge, and even sunny-day flooding—all on top of rising sea levels. This episode explores policy approaches to help build resilience for coastal communities. Dan and Alison sit down with Jeff Peterson, co-facilitator at the Coastal Flood Resilience Project, to talk about a wide range of solutions, including risk disclosure, strengthening infrastructure, supporting relocation efforts, and more.

 

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Episode Transcript:

Dan Bresette: Hello, and welcome once again to The Climate Conversation. I'm Dan Bresette, president of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, and today I'm joined by my co-host, Alison Davis. Hey, Alison. Thanks for joining me on the podcast today.

Alison Davis: Hi, Dan. I am just ecstatic because today marks the third consecutive podcast episode where we’ll be focusing on climate adaptation and resilience, which is a critically important topic that I think sometimes gets overlooked. In this episode, we're going to talk about the Coastal Flood Resilience Project, which is a coalition of non-profit organizations working together for stronger national programs and policies to prepare for coastal storm flooding and rising sea levels in the United States.

Dan: As the climate crisis worsens, each passing year brings more extreme storms, storm surge, and even what they call sunny-day flooding. Not only does this cause billions of dollars in property damage, but it also puts human lives and critical ecosystems at risk. Sea levels are projected to rise two to four feet by the year 2100, and possibly even more, according to a 2022 interagency report. As with most other climate change hazards, low-income communities and communities of color are especially vulnerable to the impacts of sea level rise.

Alison: Unfortunately, the issue of flooding—and catastrophic flooding at that—has been in the news a lot recently. communities are still recovering from Hurricane Hilary in the Southwest and Idalia in the Southeast, not to mention the devastating floods in other countries such as Libya, China, Spain, Brazil, Chile, and probably more by the time this episode comes out. The Coastal Flood Resilience Project, or CFRP, is working to strengthen coastal resilience by unifying nonprofits across the country to identify effective policy solutions.

Dan: If this group sounds familiar to you, that's probably because we heard from CFRP’s Susan Ruffo at EESI’s briefing on sea level rise last year. Speaking with us today is Jeff Peterson, who works alongside Susan as a co-facilitator at CFRP. Jeff has over four decades of experience in environmental policy development and program management, including time at the Senate Environment Public Works Committee, the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. These experiences helped inform his book, A New Coast: Strategies for Responding to Devastating Storms and Rising Seas. Jeff, it's great to see you. Thanks for joining us. It's a real pleasure to have you on the podcast.

Jeff Peterson: Great. Thank you, Dan.

Dan: Jeff, I'm going to start off by asking you about the Coastal Flood Resilience Project and their policy agenda. And this policy agenda offers a comprehensive plan to address the risks posed by climate change, including protecting coastal communities, restoring damaged ecosystems, and investing in resilient infrastructure. What are some coastal resilience policy solutions that will have the greatest impact for communities that have the fewest resources?

Jeff: The first is really education of the people in the community and the decision-makers throughout the community. That can be done pretty easily at low costs. Another key step is to begin to work for disclosure of the risks that the community faces. So all those risk levels are different, but disclosing the risk so that the people that are in these places where their principal financial asset, their home, is at risk is a really frontline policy that's pretty easy to do. [It] doesn't require a lot of legislation. Simple public meetings and mailings can do a lot for disclosure. Another thing that is really worth doing, if the community hasn't already engaged, is the Community Rating System that's within the National Flood Insurance Program. That's an opportunity for the community to look at the full array of actions that FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] has identified as smart things to do at the community level to begin to get a handle on flood resilience. And when you do those, FEMA actually reduces the amount of the premium for the flood insurance that is available in that community. An important additional step is to really think constructively about how the community can begin to back off and limit new development in the places that they know to be at risk of storm surge and rising seas. Some other ideas just quickly, really, the state Coastal Zone Management Programs are a tremendous resource and want to be helpful to communities. And I would urge any community to absolutely talk to their state Coastal Zone Management Agency, if they haven't done that already. And then finally, I think there's been a lot of progress in the last three or four years in terms of communities recognizing that it makes sense for them not to try and solve this problem all by themselves alone, and joining together with an adjacent community two, or three, or even five or 10, in a small region can really save the costs of work like analysis and assessment and developing policies.

Dan: Jeff, all those are great policy suggestions, and I know the coalition is working really, really hard to get them in place, and once they are in place, help communities take advantage of them. So it's kind of too bad it's taking so long because this problem is only going to get worse before it gets better, unfortunately. The policy agenda that was published in April 2021—and for whatever reason, I feel like the last five or so years, maybe a little bit longer, seems like a lot happens in a year. It simultaneously seems like it was forever ago, but it also feels like it was just yesterday. But April 2021 was a couple years ago, and I'm curious what's changed in your world since then, and what you might do to update the policy agenda based on what's changed since April 2021.

Jeff: Our understanding of the risks have changed dramatically. We've seen lots of new evidence, particularly on the rate of sea level rise and the expectation about greater levels of sea level rise coming down the road. But there's also been a lot of progress on the policy and program side. And some of the things that have happened in the last several years that are absolutely worth, kind of, taking account of and appreciating that we are making progress. We've seen a pretty significant increase in funding for coastal resilience programs at the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration through the National Coastal Resilience Fund and in other places. There is new money for updating FEMA’s maps, which are so badly out of date, and so desperately need to be updated and improved. We're seeing progress toward corporate requirements for disclosure by corporations of the risk to their physical assets from climate change, including things like sea level rise; a proposal from the Securities and Exchange Commission, not yet final, but coming along and likely to be final soon. We've seen increased funding for disaster resilience, and particularly—not just the clean-it-up side of the problem, but the mitigate-it-before-the-disaster-hits, pre-disaster funding—particularly increased funding for the BRIC program, building resilience for infrastructure. And we've seen a pretty dedicated focus to low-income and minority communities for a lot of this new funding, which is really important, because it's pretty well established—there are new studies a lot of them in the last couple of years—that a lot of our disaster and resilient spending hasn't really been targeted to the people that need it most. And there is now a new ocean climate action plan, and for the first time it includes coastal resilience as one of the key chapters, which is great progress. And included within that is a commitment from the federal agencies to develop a national policy on relocation of communities that are at risk of climate change, particularly coastal communities. Another great progress item is that the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard that was adopted and then rescinded by the Trump Administration has now been reinstated. And agencies are working to get that implemented into their programs so that their investments will be directed [towards] places that are most at risk of flooding, and particularly sea level rise. And finally, I'd like to mention that the [Biden-Harris] Administration has a pretty dedicated agenda to improve cost-benefit analysis generally. And while that's a good thing for cost-benefit analysis, and better recognition of the environmental components of cost-benefit analysis—it's particularly important for coastal resilience because so many of the impacts on the coasts have perhaps gone not fully recognized as benefits or costs—in terms of the measures that are implemented, maybe those costs haven't been fully appreciated. And having said all that, I think it's worth mentioning that we are adapting the policy agenda from three years ago to reflect these changes. We're considering as a group, essentially updating the entire agenda, probably it'll be early next year, but we have essentially a placeholder. And I’d just like to mention that if anyone would like to take a moment to look at the ocean climate progress report put out by a network of ocean focus nonprofits. There's a chapter in that report that looks at coastal resilience, and we've identified five key actions that we think are the near-term to-do before the end of the first Biden term, as the sort of working agenda for the group until we get the full policy agenda revised on a more comprehensive scale. So we do want to see continued effort to fully implement the ocean climate action plan. And the Army Corps of Engineers is in the process of developing regulations that will implement, for their programs, the new principles and requirements for water resources that apply across the entire federal government. We've also recommended expedited efforts to implement the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard. We recommended that the agencies develop maps that show not just where sea level rise might be—if you just pick a number off the top of your head, we can do that already through some tools online—but what's really lacking is the federal government saying, “We think this is a reasonable scenario of sea level rise to project, and here are the areas that we think will be at risk in 2050, or 2070, or 2100.” We haven't done that. If we did that, it would allow communities and states to make much better progress on things like disclosure of sea level rise risk. Right now, it's hard to say, “Well, where should we require disclosure of a risk like that?” And finally, we've recommended that the federal government work to provide leadership to develop national plans in some key sectors for the large-scale critical infrastructure along the coast that’s at risk to storms and rising seas.

Alison: Jeff, one of the recommendations from one of your white papers for the issue of sea level rise is relocating communities that would be affected by these disasters. What are some of the costs, benefits, and best practices for relocating communities that are affected by severe coastal storms and rising sea levels?

Jeff: A couple of things to say upfront about relocation. It's important to keep in mind the distinction between disaster-driven relocation and sea-level-rise-driven relocation. In the case of disaster-driven relocation, we're talking about storms that hit a particular area, once in perhaps a 10- or 20- or 30-year period. Those flooding events that often cause huge damage—Hurricane Ian was a recent good example—they do cause immense damage, they might require that some assets be relocated, but they might also allow people to make a decision about their own property and financial investments, that they remain in a place knowing the risk. In the case of sea level rise, we're talking about a different problem. It's not the temporary, severe storm surge that comes and then goes away for a long time. Sea level rise, when it comes, it's here to stay. And it's not getting more and then going less, like the tides. It's getting more and it's accelerating. And it's going to keep coming for hundreds of years. So it's unavoidable. And so we're going to need to relocate as sea level rise makes sustaining communities in areas that are inundated impractical, if not impossible. A second thing to think about in the context of this whole discussion is whether you want to approach the problem from a community basis or an individual basis. Is it our goal, as a society, to have a program and policy that's designed to protect communities and relocate them en masse to a safer place, and preserve all the values and culture and important social networks that exist in coastal communities? Another really critical kind of foundational question here is that we need to think about policies that apply to the existing communities, and how these policies should apply to any potential new development that may occur in the time period between today and when any relocation might occur. Another key consideration is that in most of what we've talked about, we're anticipating that relocations will be voluntary, both at the community scale and really at the individual scale. It's important to keep in mind that, as useful as a buyout tool is, the scale of the problem that we face just in the case of residential property along the coasts, the number of homes at risk in the years ahead, given the rate of sea level rise we expect is far greater than the financial resources available to the federal government to buy everyone out. We've recommended that the buyouts that we can afford to do be focused on the people most in need. To support that effort, we've recommended that the states, that the federal government basically support states in developing thoughtful long-term plans for working with communities to think about relocation, either in a community scale or neighborhood scale or an individual scale, and how each state and community wants to handle that. We're simply recommending that states come to grips with the problem and think it through. We do provide funding right now, very substantial funding, billions of dollars scale, through the Army Corps of Engineers to implement planning and projects for coastal storm events, which is different from dealing with the sea level rise problem.

Alison: And in areas where maybe relocation doesn't make the most sense, or maybe a lot of folks simply don't want to relocate, another possible solution is rebuilding coastal infrastructure in order to optimize resilience to flooding and other climate impacts. Of course, restructuring our coastal communities can be costly. So I'm wondering if you can talk about how local governments can revise their building codes so that their structures can remain resilient to storms and rising sea levels and still be cost-effective.

Jeff: Yes, relocation may not be the answer for everyone right away, in the near-term. There are places where physical protection structures, whether it's a seawall or in some cases, there have been proposals for big structures that are gates that allow water to be held back from a bay or coastal area, and even beach nourishment are basically physical engineering approaches to maintaining the current shoreline in place where it is even despite the rising sea levels. And that can work for a period of time as an interim measure. In different places, that time period may be short, and other places that will be longer. And sometimes physical geography helps and makes a physical structure more practical than it would, say, if you were on a barrier island. And then there are financial implications of investments in major physical protection structures that are really only interim measures. There are other places that simply lack those resources or are very hard pressed to come up with them. That said, they might reach a different decision based on local factors. Building codes, which you mentioned, are a key part of this equation. And the most immediate thing that comes up in the context of building codes and coastal flood resilience is elevation. And, well, why don't we just say, “We'll revise our building code to require the buildings that are in these risky areas be elevated above the floodwaters that we expect”? Well, elevation would protect you even if there's a flood of water on the ground that you're elevated from. But when you begin to think that through, there are a lot of implications of that, and most of them are bad. A flood of water, or even temporary flood of water due to high tides around your home, can be a real hazard. The local government is not going to be able to get police cars in there, they're not going to be able to get ambulance service there. And our recommendation is that, rather than focusing on building codes, that communities need to focus on their zoning code. And essentially, there's a lot of literature about how to do this, and I might here recommend the Georgetown Climate Center Managed Retreat Tool[kit] that is available online and talks through a lot of these options. But essentially, what you're looking at is, are there places where we should be discouraging new development? And we could do that with a zoning mechanism. But in addition, are there places where we should be encouraging new development to go rather than in these risky places?

Alison: I’d like to circle back to something you mentioned while you were talking about low- to moderate-income communities and communities of color, and that's sea level rise risk disclosure, which can significantly improve decision-making with respect to the siting protection and relocation of physical structures. What policies can best inform coastal communities of these dangers, and what should residents in coastal communities know about risk disclosure?

Jeff: So disclosure is a really critical tool. And it has not been used enough to date. We're actively promoting better risk disclosure at multiple levels through the Coastal Flood Resilience Project. Let me say right up front that the value of disclosure is that people really have a right to know about the risks,and they need that information to inform their life decisions and investments, particularly in the home. So having said that, I do want to emphasize that we have encouraged both disclosure of flood risk at time of sale of homes as an important mechanism. We've also promoted and encouraged that, through the Securities and Exchange Commission, corporations be required to report where their physical assets are estimated to be at risk due to climate change, including from storms and sea level rise. Frankly, we're a little concerned that the state-by-state approach may be a very long time coming and leave a lot of gaps. And so we have recommended that it's time that the federal government and Congress should adopt a national standard—minimum standard—for flood risk disclosure, including along the coast, due to future projected more severe storms, and future sea level rise. So that would be an important next step. Until that can happen, we need to keep developing and encouraging individual states to adopt a basic flood disclosure requirement.

Dan: Jeff, this is great. It's so nice of you, and generous of your time to share all these perspectives. When you talk about this stuff, it doesn't take very long to get to the Army Corps of Engineers, which has a pretty big role to play in all this. So I'm going to put you on the spot. Given all the work that the Army Corps does to provide public engineering services to strengthen national security, energize the economy, reduce natural disaster risks—given all the stuff that they do, if you had one thing that you would like to see done better or differently, that would have a big impact on coastal resilience and sea level rise, what would it be?

Jeff: The single biggest thing that needs to happen to improve the work that the Corps is doing is that the storm protection planning and implementation that the Corps is now doing needs to be rethought and re-envisioned to be, not just protecting against storm surge today and in the future, but to include recognition that storm surge is a problem, but long-term future sea level rise and permanent inundation of coastal communities is also a problem—and probably for most of the coasts, the bigger, more significant problem. The single biggest thing that needs to change is the Corps needs to be given, by Congress, a direction that its coastal resilience planning needs to be, not about just storms and storm surges, but about both the dimensions of the problem: the temporary storm surge and the long-term sea level rise risk. There are some issues with the current storm protection program that I think, in addition to the sea level rise being not a critical factor there, that also needs attention. A lot of the decisions that are made in selecting the design option for a project are based, frankly, on a cost-benefit analysis that may not fully account for some of the environmental harms that are associated with a proposed project, particularly a protection structure, and that they may not account for some of the social justice implications of those projects. It's been pointed out by many that by focusing on a cost-benefit ratio—in other words, projects in which the value of a project as expressed by the value of the property protected exceeds the cost of building a protection structure—it's much easier to find a positive value if you're protecting million-dollar homes than if you're protecting homes that are worth $300,000. There's also a critical need for these existing storm planning protection projects to be developed by the Corps less in the Corps silo. Right now, those go through public review and comment, which is great, but other federal agencies that are working in the coastal resilience area often do not have much of a foothold with respect to how the Corps comes to its analysis and comes to its decision. And these projects would be, I think, much more comprehensively framed, and the project selection would improve, if the Corps had a much expanded process of working with other federal agencies, but also engaging states.

Dan: Thank you, Jeff. That's great, your point about valuing property. That's how these things were set up, right? And then if you wind it up, that's the direction that we'll take. So we'll definitely need to get policymakers to think a little bit differently, and do it in an inclusive way so that all property owners feel like they're part of the process and all in this together. It's been a real treat to hear from you today, and to see you—I know this is an audio medium, and so our listeners can't see you like Alison and I can—but still great to see you. And we really appreciate your willingness to join us on The Climate Conversation podcast.

Jeff: Thank you, I really appreciate the opportunity.

Dan: Well, Alison, inviting Jeff onto the podcast means we learn a lot about climate resilience, policy, and sea level rise, and all of the stuff that he has spent a career advancing, and we were really lucky to have him on the podcast today. I know he's been a friend to EESI for a long, long time, and it was great to have him on. He made some really excellent points, excellent points that have come up in some of our other episodes as well. The idea that, you know, a lot of these programs are designed around the premise of protecting property, and property that's worth more gets protected more. That's something that's come up in some of these recent episodes. But I think one thing that I really enjoyed listening to Jeff talk about was—two things. One, the idea that, in some cases, people moving away from impacted areas will be voluntary, and other places that may not be. And that will require thoughtfulness, not just in terms of how to sort of relocate, but also to where we relocate them to. That's something that I don't think a lot of people have been talking about, at least not on our podcast, and at least not in some of the briefings that we've had. But it's true, like thinking about where people might relocate to is something that's really, really important, especially when we have a country as big and geographically diverse as the one that we have. I thought that was a really great point, I'm glad he raised it. And the other was something that I often find myself doing, which is sort of confusing storm surge and sea level rise—two different things. And you know, when he was talking about building codes, being designed for one, but also making sure that it's designed for the other, something that, as a codes fan, something that I'm probably should do a better job thinking about, because I think it's a really, really important point. You know, a lot of times we only hear about this stuff in the news, when there's an event, right, when there's a bad storm, or when there's a terrible flooding event. But sea level rise is kind of a creeping terror, right? It's something that kind of builds over time. It's a little bit more insidious. But it's something that will be felt all over the coasts, like we talked about, by you know, many, many inches, perhaps even more, perhaps even measured in feet rather than inches, which is kind of a scary thought to be thinking about here in 2023.

Alison: I was really struck by all the parallels between what Jeff was saying in this interview today and what Rob Verchick said in his interview about a month ago, in the first episode of this season. And Rob was talking about different types of relocation that can happen as a sort of trickling effect, or everyone has to go all at once. He was also, as you mentioned, talking about the value of property in policy formation, which is increasingly an issue. And so if you haven't listened to that episode already, I encourage everyone to go back and check it out right now. But specifically talking about coastal resilience, it seems like every other week, there's a new viral video of somebody's home washing away in a massive flood. And sometimes in the national dialogue about these problems, you will hear somebody say that, you know, maybe people should just sell their homes. And I think that's just such a short-sighted approach, because who are you going to sell it to? Increasingly, it's not realistic for anybody to want to buy the home, and even if they're willing to buy the home, it's a moral question, I think, of whether you should be putting a buyer at risk. So individual sale is absolutely not an option. And so with the scope of the problem of sea level rise, it really demands that effective solutions need to happen at the policy level. That was the main thing that I took away from today. If you'd liked this story and want to learn more about EESI’s work related to coastal resilience, head to our website at eesi.org. Also follow us on social media @eesionline 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!