Improving Coastal Resilience in the Northeast

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The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) held a briefing on initiatives and partnerships that are helping protect Northeast shorelines and communities from extreme weather events and other coastal hazards. The briefing showcased nature-based solutions that support coastal resilience for wilderness areas, small communities, and large cities such as New York City. Nature-based solutions can protect human lives and property while creating habitat for wildlife and providing co-benefits like water filtration. These techniques can also be paired with traditional “gray” infrastructure to meet a greater variety of planning needs.

Much coastal restoration work involves multiple agencies at the local, state, and federal level, often working in conjunction with nonprofits and businesses across state and district lines. The panelists described this collaborative process and how buy-in for nature-based resilience projects can be achieved across diverse and sometimes competing interests.

Highlights

 

Sara Burns, Water Resource Scientist, The Nature Conservancy (TNC)

• In 2017, Massachusetts began resilience planning development and implementation. It released the first statewide climate change and natural hazard mitigation plan. This plan was FEMA approved, which opened the door for FEMA funding.
• Massachusetts has also developed the Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) Program, a state and local partnership for resilience and climate change.
  • Workshops are put on to help municipalities determine their strengths and vulnerabilities with regards to infrastructure and the environment.
  • A municipal plan is submitted to the state, after which the state identifies that community as an MVP community, which makes it eligible for funding from relevant state grant programs.
  • The program emphasizes nature-based solutions and includes green infrastructure and engineered solutions.
• Year One MVP Plan Summaries:
  • The top hazards municipalities chose to plan for included severe storms, inland flooding, heat, and wind.
  • The MVPs focused on emergency management, power infrastructure, stormwater management, local regulations and ordinances, and drinking water resilience.
  • 71 percent of the communities in Massachusetts have participated in the MVP program in some capacity.
• Two rounds of action grants have been funded, for a total of $15.3 million in funding for 67 projects.
• Eligible projects include energy resilience, ecological restoration, habitat management, redesign and retrofits, chemical safety and vulnerability, and more.
• Completed projects include a shoreline feasibility study, a cranberry bog restoration project, a comprehensive wastewater treatment resilience feasibility study, and a sewer trunk line relocation assessment.
• Federal PROTECT grants can help other states replicate the Massachusetts funding program. Sara suggests supporting PROTECT grants, as proposed by America’s Transportation Infrastructure Act of 2019.

 

Kate Boicourt, Director of Resilience, Waterfront Alliance

• The Waterfront Alliance has developed guidelines for waterfront projects, taking into account sea level rise and coastal storms.
• In terms of funding, pre-disaster mitigation funding levels have increased, but we are not quite where we need to be.
• Taxpayers can be thought of as the risk-bearers. We should be aware that there is in fact a return on investment in the long-run for investments in climate mitigation and adaptation.
• At the federal level, green and equitable approaches can be ensured by funding the National Flood Insurance Program and conducting FEMA reform; by supporting state governments in building green resilience funds; by implementing the Living Shorelines Act; by reforming our cost-benefit analyses; and by building awareness.

 

Sam Belknap, Community Development Officer, Sea Level Rise Project Lead, The Island Institute

• The Island Institute works to sustain Maine’s island and coastal communities and exchange ideas and experiences to further the sustainability of communities here and elsewhere.
• Small communities are under-resourced, with limited staff, time, and finances. Communities often do not have the population base, and therefore the tax base, to pay for adaptation and mitigation measures with purely local funding.
• The Island Institute’s sea level rise resilience team works by facilitating community conversations to spur adaptive actions; providing planning and technical support to move communities forward; and making targeted investments to leverage larger returns from state and federal programs.
• Sea level rise is just one of the aspects of climate change that the Institute focuses on. Warming waters, ocean acidification, and extreme weather all impact our coastline and our ability to keep our industries healthy.
• Municipalities have a good sense of what the costs of a project are, but do not have a good way to compare that cost to the cost of inaction.
• Belknap focused on the community of Vinalhaven, whose port brings in 18-20 percent of all of Maine's lobster landings (the lobster fishery is worth $1.5 billion annually for the state). Fifty-five percent of its 1,150 year-round residents are sole proprietors of their business, and most make a living from the lobster fishery or tourism. They are highly vulnerable to sea level rise and are taking steps to adapt.
• The combined landings of three small ports in Maine (Vinalhaven, Rockland and Stonington) account for more commercial landing value than all the species landed in New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island combined.
• The Island Institute has a What Works Solutions Library that helps municipalities plan for actionable adaptation solutions in the face of sea level rise and climate change.

 

Question and Answer Session

 

In lieu of federal resources, how are communities in your area financing coastal resilience projects?

• Sam: Working together to leverage larger funding sources is key.
• Kate: The New Jersey Blue Acres program is a good model; it has been working for a long time and spent $300 million on restoring floodplains.
• Kate: The New York Electric Authority has a line item on its electric bills that funds long-term efforts.
• Sara: In Massachusetts, the Community Preservation Act offers dedicated taxes to help fund some of these projects.
• Sara: The Nature Conservancy has been thinking about working with insurance companies to prove that natural infrastructure is essential to development. When a storm happens, the insurance companies should pay out to be able to support and maintain those natural benefits.

 

How do you share information with other communities across the country and the world?

• Kate: The Hampton Roads Adaptation Forum in Virginia allows us to see what other people are doing and learn from them.
• Sara: The U.S. Climate Alliance is putting on a learning lab, and the work that Massachusetts is doing will be incorporated into that.
• Sam: We publish an annual newsletter and work heavily to connect with as many other networks as possible. We pride ourselves in the stories our communities have and our storytelling ability.

 

Can you talk about surveying geospatial sets and what that means for your work today?

• Kate: Having spatial data available is incredibly important.
• Sara: Having flood, heat, and sea level projections help get action items developed.
• Sam: Having maps directly fed into our ability to use Maine-specific scenarios for sea-level rise, which was a game-changer. However, maps are not sufficiently available, and we do not have the capacity to work with Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

 

As a quasi-regional organization, how are you approaching climate migration and managed retreat, and how are your communities thinking about this?

• Sam: We think about it when our communities ask us to think about it. No one is really having a conversation about where to move people when the sea levels get higher.
• Kate: Affordable housing and climate migration are linked, and long-term planning is important. We need to invest in quality affordable housing, and we need to think about zoning and climate-resilient options.
• Kate: There is not much long-term funding for buyout programs, and there will be a lot more need for funding over time.
• Sara: Managed retreat has come up, but is usually brought up by someone in a state agency rather than local residents. In terms of climate migration, Holioke has a population of about 2,000 people from Puerto Rico.

 

The Northeast faces a diverse set of coastal challenges, including coastal erosion, threats from storms such as Hurricane Sandy, and heavy property development. However, inventive collaborative projects developed in the Northeast can prove a model for other regions experiencing similar issues.

The briefing provided specific project examples to protect both homes and industry and the legislation and policies developed at the federal level to help those projects succeed, along with suggestions for further Congressional opportunities to support long-term sustainability of the country’s coastal infrastructure.