Hiding the Impacts of Climate Change in South Carolina

Ben Chou, Water Policy Analyst, Washington, D.C.

As a near native of the Palmetto State, I often find myself reminiscing about the many years I lived there. From my childhood in Mauldin (near Greenville), to high school in Hartsville (near Florence), undergrad in Columbia (Go Gamecocks!), and a few months post-college in Charleston, I have lived in many areas of the state. I even return a few times a year to visit my in-laws in Myrtle Beach.

• Sunset on Hilton Head Island (photo by Lee Edwin Coursey)

One of my favorite things about the state is a slogan that used to grace the license plate: Smiling Faces. Beautiful Places. I think it nicely sums up the warm and friendly disposition of the people and amazing natural beauty found in South Carolina. Unfortunately, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has kept under wraps a report that spells trouble for the state's beautiful places and could turn those smiles into frowns.

The DNR completed a climate change vulnerability assessment a few years ago but decided against releasing it for public review. The report was leaked to a major state newspaper and then published on their website. It seems like a waste of taxpayer money for a public agency to invest so much time and many resources into developing a study only to leave it collecting dust on a shelf somewhere, especially when it comes to an incredibly important topic that will impact all South Carolinians-climate change.

According to the report, there have been several observed changes in the state's climate and across the Southeast region:

• Since 1970, a general warming trend has been observed in the state's three major geographic divisions.
• Water temperatures in Charleston Harbor have shown a steady warming trend since 1985.
• Across the Southeast, there have been observed increases in heavy downpours in many areas even though moderate to severe drought conditions also were widespread.

Over the next 70 years, average temperatures are projected to rise 4.5°F to 9°F depending on future greenhouse gas emissions. And as if summers were not already hot enough (and extremely humid might I add), the greatest temperature increases are projected to occur during the summer months. By the 2080s, summers are projected to be about 11°F hotter. Just imagine summer highs well into the triple digits being the norm instead of the exception. Drought conditions also are expected to become longer, more frequent, and more intense as temperatures and rates of evapotranspiration rise.

The report only focuses on direct impacts to natural resources, which also will affect natural resource-dependent industries like tourism and recreational fishing and hunting-tourism alone contributes approximately $17 billion annually to the state economy. There are also untold impacts to people, homes, businesses, communities, and the economy that are not included in this assessment.

These are a few of the likely consequences of climate change for natural resources in the state from the report:

• Rising sea levels will impact beaches, wetlands, and other coastal habitat, threatening sea turtles, birds, and commercially-important fisheries like shrimp and blue crab.
• Increasing salinity in river systems due to sea level rise will force freshwater and diadromous fish (fish that spend portions of their life cycles in freshwater and saltwater) to move upstream, where possible, to find better habitat.
• Warmer water temperatures could cause a shift in the distribution of anadromous species (fish that live in saltwater but return to freshwater to spawn) like striped bass and sturgeon and cause coldwater fishes like brook trout and smallmouth bass to become locally extinct.

While this report is a critical first step towards planning for climate change impacts, the state still has much work to do. Given that the places and wildlife that people love so much are at great risk, the DNR should formally release this report for public review. The state also should take immediate steps to examine what the likely impacts of climate change are for other sector areas as part of the development of a statewide climate preparedness plan. Approximately 20 percent of states in the U.S. have developed such a plan. The state can and should join these ranks to preserve its beautiful places and keep the smiles on the faces of future generations of South Carolinians.

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/bchou/hiding_the_impacts_of_climate.

Preparing Transportation for Climate Change: We Are Not Ready

Deron Lovaas, Federal Transportation Policy Director, Washington, D.C.

This past Sunday at church, my daughter and I heard a story based on a children's book that delighted her and caught my attention too. You may have heard of it - "Ming Lo Moves the Mountain." It's a clever parable about a family frustrated at the effects of a mountain looming over their home, including lack of sunlight and occasional boulders crashing through the roof. They determine they have to move the mountain, and after consulting the village wise man repeatedly they finally figure out how to get the job done. They deconstruct their house, pack it up, close their eyes, and take enough steps back that the mountain magically becomes smaller!

It's a cute story which resonated with me because I've been thinking and reading up on climate preparedness. Being prepared requires, first of all, respect for Mother Nature so we can adjust to reality when necessary (i.e., move away from the mountain).

Based on my research so far, I can't help but conclude that we are not ready, at least not in the transportation sector. Far from it.

Photo of flooded NY subway stop after Superstorm Sandy hit, courtesy of MTA

First of all, it helps to diagnose the situation - just how far-reaching and intense might the effects of climate change be? As part of its latest, statutorily required initiative to determine this via a National Climate Assessment, the Department of Transportation held a two-day workshop last fall about the "Systemic Impacts of Climate on Transportation." Here's the final report from the series of presentations by government and academic analysts, followed by a facilitated discussion with our whole group. The presentations are sobering. Sea-level rise scenarios of 0.2 to 2.0 meters (anywhere from 8 inches to 6-and-a-half feet!) by 2100; more extreme events including droughts, floods, storms, heat and cold waves and hurricanes; as well as challenging "slow-motion" shifts like crop migration.

Some of this is echoed in the National Climate Assessment (NCA) draft itself (a nearly 1200-page report which is currently available for public comments here). The transportation chapter (pdf here) provides the first hint that we aren't prepared. There is some useful diagnostic information here, including the bald assertion that changing climatic conditions "are reducing [not will reduce; emphasis mine] the reliability and capacity of the U.S. transportation system in many ways." There's also a useful matrix for illustrating risks of climate-related impacts, with "magnitude of consequences" and "likelihood of occurrence" plotted out; this could be a diagnostic tool for state and local transportation agencies.

But other than some generic advice regarding adaptation and coping techniques, and a few interesting success stories -- no surprise that the transit agency in the progressive haven of Portlandia has already installed expansion joints for rail in vulnerable locations - the chapter is thin gruel when it comes to assessing preparedness at the local, state or national levels. We have to look elsewhere to determine how ready we might be.

So I searched the thousands of papers from this year's Transportation Research Board conference for ones on climate adaptation and preparedness. How many did I find? Just 5.

Transportation is a notoriously close-knit industry so as expected one of the papers was co-authored by one of the authors of the NCA transpo chapter, Professor Michael Meyer (the co-author's a grad student, Thomas Wall). The paper is a "synthesis" examination of infrastructure-specific adaptation frameworks in Australia, Canada, the EU, New Zealand, Scotland as well as the U.K. and U.S. An eye-catching conclusion is a "broad agreement on the limitations of the frameworks developed, and the barriers preventing their further development and implementation."

The other two that were most interesting include one explaining a "sensitivity matrix," a tool for gauging the vulnerability of infrastructure assets to damage based on possible storm surges on the Gulf Coast. The team at ICF consulting developed this with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA, and it's consequently available on the FHWA site here), and unfortunately as the authors note it may not be applicable to public transportation assets.

The other one, entitled "Assessing Public Transportation Agencies' Climate Change Adaptation Activities and Needs," is all about public transportation, and is co-authored by (who else?) two Portland State University professors. In addition to an inventory of climate adaptation projects funded by smart staff at the Federal Transit Administration (I wrote about FTA's work in previous blog entry), the paper reports on the results of a survey of public transportation agencies coordinate with the American Public Transportation Association (or APTA; NRDC is proud to be a member of it). 64 transit agencies from 28 states filled out a survey, and the findings are frankly alarming. Fully 92 percent say they've already been impacted just in the last decade by major storm events, and 60 percent "felt it was somewhat important for their organizations to prepare for future impacts of climate change..." and 28 percent "indicated that their organization feels that climate change is currently impacting their community..."

The good news is that at least 38 percent of agencies are "collecting cost data and/or other information and data about weather events or climate projections to assess the impact on their infrastructure and operations" and 57 percent have "identified assets and infrastructure that are vulnerable to extreme weather events." But "only 21 respondents indicated that their agency was currently involved in adaptation climate change planning activities" and "nearly 34 percent of the agencies are not collecting or using any data related to extreme weather or climate change." [emphases mine] The three big barriers to doing more identified by those surveyed include lack of funding, low institutional priority and need for better data and tools. And these are the subset of 300 agencies surveyed who chose to respond, self-selection that probably entails a higher degree of commitment and preparation than those who ignored the questionnaire.

To be clear, there are examples of leaders in climate preparedness as profiled in the NCA as well as in resources such as the National Academies new report on Disaster Resilience: A National Imperative (report and handy, brief executive summary available here) and U.Va. Professor Tim Beatley's well-written book Planning for Coastal Resilience. And in response to hurricane Sandy, New York City and State have pulled together impressive plans including one looking way out to the year 2100.

The bottom line though is that laggards outnumber leaders in climate preparedness, and policymakers must get to work in order to change that for the sake of our transportation system's future.

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/dlovaas/preparing_transportation_for

Maryland is Taking Action to Prepare for Rising Seas

Ben Chou, Water Policy Analyst, Washington, D.C.

As Hurricane Sandy vividly demonstrated in late October, coastal communities across the U.S. are increasingly vulnerable to flooding and storm surge as sea levels rise. Storm surge from more extreme storms on top of higher sea levels increases coastal flooding by allowing floodwaters to move further inland, putting people, homes, and businesses in harm's way.

Given Maryland's thousands of miles of shoreline, coastal hazards are an ever-present threat. The state's coastal zone includes the 16 counties that border the Atlantic Ocean, Chesapeake Bay, and Potomac River-an area encompassing two-thirds of the state's total land, which contains nearly 70 percent of all residents. Since the early 1900s, relative sea levels along Maryland's coast have risen over one foot, placing 13 islands in Chesapeake Bay underwater. And approximately 580 acres of coastal land are lost to erosion every year.

• Abandoned home on Holland Island in 2009, which has since collapsed into the sea (photo credit: flickr user baldeaglebluff)

Rising seas due to warmer, expanding oceans and melting ice will only exacerbate existing coastal hazards, further jeopardizing communities in coastal areas. Relative sea levels are projected to rise by approximately one foot by mid-century and about three feet by the end of the century-though these projections were developed in 2008 and more recent data on rates of future sea level rise are now available. In fact, a 2012 study by the U.S. Geological Survey found that rates of sea level rise along the mid-Atlantic coast (from Cape Hatteras to Boston) are three to four times greater than the global average primarily due to the weakening of ocean currents. Warmer water temperatures and melting glaciers are decreasing the density of water in the northern Atlantic, which is subsequently affecting ocean circulation patterns.

According to our recent report, Maryland has been among the leading states in the country when it comes to preparing for climate change impacts. And the state is not idly standing by. Last week Governor Martin O'Malley signed the Climate Change and Coast Smart Construction Executive Order, which will help to reduce flooding risks to state buildings and public infrastructure in coastal areas. The order directs:

• State agencies to consider coastal flooding and sea level rise risks in the siting, design, and construction of new state buildings and the reconstruction of substantially damaged state buildings;
• The Department of General Services to update its engineering and design guidelines to require state agencies to elevate new and rebuilt state structures two or more feet above the 100-year flood level;
• The Department of Natural Resources to develop recommendations for siting and design requirements for coastal state infrastructure such as roads, bridges, and water systems and non-state infrastructure that receive public funds;
• The Scientific and Technical Working Group of the state's climate change commission to update statewide sea level rise projections based on the latest climate science.

These are critical first steps that every coastal state should be taking to prepare communities for more extreme storms and higher seas. By not factoring climate change into fundamental land use and structural design decisions, states are turning a blind eye to a problem that will only get worse. It's time for other governors across the country to stop ignoring the problem and, like Governor O'Malley, start implementing solutions.

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/bchou/maryland_is_taking_action_to_p