5 Ways States Are (and Aren't) Planning for Rising Sea Levels

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Water, Water, Everywhere...

An inch here, an inch there...sometimes it’s easy to forget that sea levels continue to rise around the world and soon all those inches will add up.

The most recent scientific calculation—which includes projections for Greenland and Antarctica’s melting ice and its effect on sea-level rise—suggests that by 2100 the sea will have climbed by 30 inches to six feet.

What do those numbers mean to city managers trying to predict the future of life on the edge? Many are already making plans. Which in many cases means literally packing up and moving on.

“I like to think of it as getting out of the way gracefully,” David Revell, a senior coastal scientist at ESA PWA, a San Francisco-based environmental consulting firm, told the Associated Press.

In Britain seawalls have been purposely breached to create salt marshes, which act as natural barriers against flooding. In Alaska entire villages have been forced to move to higher ground. Meanwhile, several Atlantic states have adopted no-build zones and setbacks and ordered homeowners not to build seawalls, which have proven to be largely inadequate against rising seas.

Here’s how five different states are making plans for a future of higher tides.

(Photo: Andy Nelson/Getty Images)

California

In California, San Francisco-area planners have been attempting to shore up the eroding coast near the Great Highway for years by adding broken rock as a barrier. Since 2002 the town of Pacifica has been buying homes built too near the coast and knocking them down. In Ventura the city is spending $4.5 million to relocate an oceanfront bike path so it can be rebuilt further inland.

(Photo: Doug Pensinger/Getty Images)

Hawaii

Geologists in Hawaii say more than 70 percent of Kauai’s beaches are eroding while Oahu has already lost a quarter of its sandy shoreline, and they warn that the problem is only going to get worse. The state is doing everything it can to keep the sand in Waikiki, for example, joining with hotels in the state’s tourist hub on a plan to spend between $2 million and $3 million to pump in sand from offshore. Along Kailua, which is lined by multimillion-dollar homes and no seawall, a “triage” plan will use conservation money to buy up adjoining properties, tear down buildings, and allow sand to shift inland naturally.

(Photo: Allan Baxter/Getty Images)

Louisiana

Louisiana has already lost 1,900 square miles of coast in the past century—an area the size of Manhattan each year—due to mismanagement and natural disasters. The state recently passed a $50 billion, 50-year project to restore the coast. Meanwhile, some band-aid projects are in the works, including a 10,000-foot, $5.9 million stone breakwater to be built off Pass Manchac starting later this summer.

Isle de Jean Charles may be the most stark example of coastal loss, though. In the 1950s it was 11 miles long and five miles across; today it’s less than two miles long and a quarter-mile wide. The region is home to the Pointe-au-Chien tribe, which is being encouraged to move. “When we move off the island and our people move into other communities,” said the tribe’s chief, “we lose our culture, our people, our land. Basically we’re losing everything that an Indian tribe has.”

(Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Virginia

Streets and parking lots near the shore in the town of Virginia Beach already flood twice a day with the tides. Planning groups up and down the coastline are spending money on new high-resolution elevation data, trying to educate the public and elected officials, and partnering with NOAA to produce a series of models to accurately simulate the coming flooding and its impact. Chief worries include transportation infrastructure (roads and train lines), insurance (which is going to get harder to get and more expensive), and the ability of emergency services to reach certain locations if water levels are too high.

(Photo: Hisham Ibrahim/Getty Images)

North Carolina

North Carolina takes the prize for most reckless: Its state legislature is considering a bill that would require the government to ignore new reports of rising sea levels and predictions of ocean and climate scientists. The law is being pushed by businessmen and climate-change skeptics who don’t want to spend money on planning for sea-level rise. “Our concern is that the economy could be tremendously impacted by a hypothetical number with nothing but computers and speculation,” said the chairman of an economic development group representing the state’s 20 coastal counties. “Clearly they don’t understand science at all,” says Stan Riggs, a professor at East Carolina University who is an expert on the state’s coastline. “To put blinders on and just say we don’t accept what’s happening on our coast is absolutely criminal.”

(Photo: The Washington Post/Getty Images)

Should states be spending state dollars to prepare for rising sea levels?

A six-time grantee of the National Geographic Expeditions Council, Jon Bowermaster has spent the past two decades circling the world’s ocean, studying both its health and the lives of the people who depend on it. He is the author of 11 books (his most recent, OCEANS, Threats to Our Seas and What You Can Do to Turn the Tide, was published by Participant Media) and producer of a dozen documentary films. His blog—Notes From Sea Level—reports daily on issues impacting the ocean and us. Follow Jon on Facebook. @jonbowermaster Email Jon