City of Miami Beach gets rising seas sticker shock – ‘We need to be making an escape plan for 2.5 million residents’
By Paul Brinkmann, with additional reporting by Oscar Pedro Musibay
10 August 2012 (South Florida Business Journal) – The city of Miami Beach is vetting a $200 million storm water concept that is one of the first in the nation to respond to sea level rise resulting from global warming. As part of the process, global storm water engineering firm CDM Smith is going to explain its methodology at the Sea Level Rise Public Meeting & Discussion at 10 a.m. on Aug. 17. The CDM Smith plan was created to address storm water-related issues in Miami Beach over the next 20 years. It lays out various strategies that include New Orleans-style pumps and sea walls to combat higher water levels and increased flooding. The city’s finance committee was reviewing the plan, which could be funded by bonds and backed by an increase in water and sewer bills. Interim City Manager Kathie G. Brooks told the Business Journal she is still evaluating the plan. “To the best of our knowledge, this is one of the first storm water master plans in the state of Florida that considers potential impacts of sea level rise,” she said in an email response to questions. “The draft plan presents projections of sea level rise from various sources; however, sea level rise studies are still ongoing, and we will need to continue to evaluate any future studies.” A mix of residents has come out against the plan, including retired engineers serving on city committees. The most surprising opposition comes from environmental activists who believe climate change is causing sea level rise – and that the plan either doesn’t go far enough or is too little, too late. “This plan minimizes and downplays the cost and seriousness of this problem,” said Dwight Kraai, a retired engineer on the city’s capital improvements committee. “Simply put, the city is planning for 4 inches of sea level rise when they know it will be more than that.” […] Miami Beach is considered one of the most vulnerable cities in the world to sea level rise. Most of it is 4 feet above sea level. The sea level estimate is important because it determines whether water can be drained by gravity or if it must be pumped up to the bay or into an aquifer. Kraai said the plan starts with a faulty assumption that seas have not risen at all, or only by tiny increments, in the past two decades. “This is contrary to all current evidence,” he said. The city hired Cambridge, Mass.-based CDM to write the plan, which cites sea level projections from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. But the plan uses the Corps’ most conservative estimates. The plan identifies 17 additional pump stations needed, but also notes “as sea level rises, pumping may become more frequent or will require replacement with larger pumps.” Some of Miami Beach’s swankiest neighborhoods are in the plan for improvements, including Star Island, La Gorce, Palm, and Hibiscus islands. Kraai and other activists recently addressed the Miami Beach Breakfast Club during a neighborhood meeting. With café con leche flowing, 50 people watched a video about rising seas and heard from local fishing boat captain Dan Kipnis, an environmental activist and member of the Miami-Dade County Climate Change Task Force. He noted news of rapidly melting ice packs in Greenland. Asked what the city should be doing, Kipnis said he wants to live in Miami Beach as long as possible, but “we need to be making an escape plan for 2.5 million residents, rather than spending millions on projects that won’t be enough to address the problem.”
"The most surprising opposition comes from environmental activists who believe climate change is causing sea level rise – and that the plan either doesn’t go far enough or is too little, too late.
“This plan minimizes and downplays the cost and seriousness of this problem,” said Dwight Kraai, a retired engineer on the city’s capital improvements committee. “Simply put, the city is planning for 4 inches of sea level rise when they know it will be more than that.” […]
All very true. Planning for just 4 inches is quite ridiculous. It's not just too little too late, it's incredibly naive. $200 million is a drop in the bucket, this is going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars and still be "unsolved".
You cannot simply "hold back" the rising oceans and their impacts upon highly built coastal cities.
All of Florida coastal cities and towns are going to be lost to rising oceans. Evacuation will be essential (this century).
No further construction should be permitted in low-lying areas, up and down the entire Eastern seaboard. ~Survival Acres~