How to prevent flood disasters: Use laws and policies to systematically reduce risks

How to prevent flood disasters: Use laws and policies to systematically reduce risks

Last June, I was fortunate to participate in an eye-opening panel discussion on the topic of “When is the retreat managed?Resilience, relocation and climate justice” Conference sponsored by the Earth Institute of the Climate Institute. discuss, “From planning to implementation: a legal and policy perspective to manage withdrawal,” outlines a method from high-level policy to local implementation to plan for sea level rise (SLR) and manage the retreat within the existing legal framework. The practitioners and legal experts present have taught me a lot of protection and relocation from floods Practical methods of invasion, and I hope to share these methods with anyone considering the long-term safety of coastal communities.

“The question is,” asked J. Peter Byrne of the Georgetown University Law Center, “Will the retreat happen suddenly, chaotically, and catastrophically, or whether the community can develop legal tools to make the retreat relatively safe, Efficient and ecologically acceptable.” Discuss how to implement the system to achieve the latter as a guiding light for dialogue. Inevitably, the group acknowledged that it needs to retreat from coastal areas at risk (after all, this is a meeting about managed retreat). But at the same time, their expertise has solved the problem of preparing our legal system, communities, buildings and infrastructure to ensure the best results as the sea level rises. But what legal tools can create safety in wildfires and floods, increase efficiency in the face of unprecedented loss of value, and ecological acceptability when the ocean enters the built environment?To answer this question, we turned to two opposing practitioners in this country: Mitchell Austin of Punta Gorda, Florida and Ashley Reineman of the California Coastal Commission.

Austin, the chief planner of his city, was half laughing when proudly talking about Punta Gorda’s advanced adaptation plan. Although most of the city is located in Hurricane Evacuation Zone A-this is the first area to be cleared when evacuation is required-Punta Gorda has taken many measures to beneficially mitigate the damage caused by rising sea levels . After the 2004 hurricane caused major damage throughout Punta Gorda, city planners worked with students from the University of Florida Law Clinic to incorporate the SLR policy into their comprehensive plan, which is a legally effective advanced land use document. The plan consists of a goal, a policy, and a measurement component, all of which are essential to provide a clear framework for assessing and reducing risks.

Most of the group’s presentations and discussions focused on the three Ms I call risk: measurement, modeling, and mitigation. Mathematically speaking, the risk is the probability of an event multiplied by the degree of damage that the event will cause (build a lifeguard tower worth $1,000, if there is a 10% chance of being destroyed by a storm surge, the risk is $100). By first modeling and measuring the city’s risks, as described in Punta Gorda’s comprehensive plan, planners such as Austin can take action to reduce the risk. For example, they can do this by reducing the likelihood of flooding reaching certain areas and/or the damage that would occur if it did so. Punta Gorda solves the former by acquiring as much fragile coastal land as possible and building a viable coastline outside the oyster reef to prevent flooding. They solved the latter by upgrading the rainwater management system of the five major river basins throughout the city.

By the end of this century, 13 million Americans may be displaced by rising sea levels. At a recent management retreat meeting hosted by the Columbia Climate School, photographer Michael Snyder shared this image showing how the sea level in the Chesapeake Bay area rises by 6 feet.

Punta Gorda officials implemented these assessments and strategies in 2009 as part of the citywide adaptation plan. Although there is no legal power for comprehensive planning, this adaptation document bridges the gap between law and local implementation. Then, the strategy is to flush (hopefully not with flooding) and repeat. By continuously modeling and measuring risks from SLR and flooding, and then planning and adjusting to reduce overall risk, Punta Gorda has gradually increased its resilience while keeping its community intact. This strategy benefits from the city’s state-of-the-art planning since the 1990s, using most of the waterfront as public land and transforming it block by block into parks and conservation areas, which also helps to reduce the value loss that occurs as the water level rises. .

But when most waterfronts are more privatized than Punta Gorda, how can the community take coastline actions? Byrne explained that in many states, the ocean-facing land of the Mean High Tide Line (MHTL), which is the average point of tidal rise, is public. Due to the legal principle known as the accretion and avulsion rule, there is a strong argument that because the SLR line moves inland, the land changes from private to public and can therefore be confiscated and used for public interest. Therefore, Byrne asserted, “As a whole, the public represented by the government now has an important interest in the intertidal area and will have more beaches in the future.” Private property owners and conservative judges tried various methods. The use of this rule is restricted, but the Punta Gorda coastline has a high percentage of government-owned protected areas, which makes the coastline more resistant to storms passing through Port Charlotte than private coastline development projects.

However, Byrne did not expropriate the land in accordance with this rule. Instead, he recommended some strategies to work with developers and private owners to jointly plan for SLR. He suggested setting conditions in the current permit that once the sea level reaches a certain physical threshold, the structure needs to be moved, changed or demolished. This will help provide developers with space and time to plan for sea level rise, while reducing subjectivity and legal clarity. In addition, to prevent landowners from trying to prevent MHTL from converting land from private to public land, Byrne advocates the use of accretion and tearing rules to prevent shoreline armor, which can also lead to beach erosion.

This seawall battle has recently become a major issue in California, where Ashley Reineman serves as a climate change expert for the California Coastal Commission (CCC). Her work at CCC echoes a similar strategy to Austin, which is to gradually implement smart coastal policies on the legislative ladder. However, Austin is a local practitioner, and Reineman brings the perspective of high-level decision makers. She explained that although CCC is the main issuer of coastal development licenses, the committee can also delegate license power to cities and counties through local coastal projects (LCP). Similar to Punta Gorda, CCC cooperates with universities, but it also cooperates with ports and governments at all levels for development, public works, and port master planning. The California Coastal Act (1976) governs the issuance of permits and LCP approval, and is consistent with the three Ms, and strives to minimize the risks of new development projects and maximize shoreline protection. To achieve these results, the CCC issued advanced policy guidance on how communities should analyze risks and prepare for sea level rise. The Reineman report stated that “provides probabilities related to low- and high-emission scenarios from 2030 to 2100 and beyond. Forecasting.” This guide can help communities understand how to assess risk and their legal options for addressing this risk within the scope of the Coastal Law and its responsibility to protect coastal ecology, passages, and other resources.

By adopting LCP, coastal communities translate long-term goals into science-based local adaptation strategies, including specific LCP policies, which stipulate how and whether to approve new development projects, and how to address the risks faced by existing development projects. These strategies include some of Byrne’s recommendations, such as waiving the right to future shoreline armor and imposing legal triggers on additional requirements when the water level rises, such as requiring final dismantling or adapting to new developments. Reineman pointed out that this legal language written in the approved permit is intended to educate developers and landowners, not against them.

In the final analysis, relocation is sticky, and retreat is difficult to accomplish overnight. However, by focusing on continuous, planned, and gradual retreats entrenched in policy and law, many communities can achieve significantly better results. Byrne listed many potential areas where these strategies can prevent the catastrophe of sudden chaos and unmanaged retreat from eConsolidation, expensive disaster and flood insurance, mortgage financing, and declining property values ​​and taxes. These are real problems, and proper planning can have a significant impact on people’s lives. By taking risk as a yardstick and seeking to reduce it bit by bit, from planning to practice, from Florida to California, we can retreat in the right way.

Finally, Katie Spidalieri of the Georgetown Climate Center excellently presided over the panel discussion. Management retreat kit Help each community from proposal to implementation. Be sure to check it out and see what you can do to help reduce risk and make your hometown more resilient!

Missed the meeting?All courses are now available to watch online-watch here.