Surrendering to Rising Seas

[tao]

Coastal communities struggling to adapt to climate change are beginning to do what was once unthinkable: retreat

 

MONIQUE COLEMAN’S BASEMENT was still wet with saltwater when the rallying began. Just days after Superstorm Sandy churned into the mid-Atlantic region, pushing a record-breaking surge into the country’s most densely populated corridor, the governor of New Jersey promised to put the sand back on the beaches.

 

The “build it back stronger” sentiment never resonated with Coleman, who lived not on the state’s iconic barrier islands but in a suburban tidal floodplain bisected by 12 lanes of interstate highway. Sandy was being billed as an unusual “Frankenstorm,” a one-in-500-year hurricane that also dropped feet of snow. But for Coleman and many residents of the Watson-Crampton neighborhood in Woodbridge Township, the disaster marked the third time their houses had been inundated by floodwaters in just three years. Taxed by the repetitive assault of hydrodynamic pressure, some foundations had collapsed.

 

As evacuees returned home for another round of sump pumps and mold, Coleman considered her options. Woodbridge sits in the pinched waist of New Jersey, where a network of rivers and creeks drain to the Raritan Bay and then to the Atlantic Ocean. She heard that the Army Corps of Engineers wouldn’t be coming to build a berm or tide gate; the area had recently been evaluated, and such costly protections seemed unlikely. Spurred by previous storms, Coleman had already learned a bit about the ecological history of her nearly 350-year-old township. She discovered that parts of her neighborhood, like many chunks of this region, were developed atop low-lying wetlands, which had been elevated with poorly draining “fill” back around the early 20th century. As Coleman researched more deeply, a bigger picture emerged. “I started to realize that, in a sense, we were victims of a system because we were living in a neighborhood that should have never been built,” she says.

 

Although she had flood insurance—her mortgage required it—Coleman knew that her premiums would soon go up, and she worried that her property value would go down. She and her husband liked their house, a prewar colonial. Best of all, it was affordable, a rare find in a town so close to New York City. Coleman had only discovered she would be living in a “special flood hazard area” once she was reading the closing paperwork in 2006. That made her nervous. She recalls her attorney waving it off by saying that at the rate we’re going, everyone in New Jersey will live in a floodplain. That might be true in spirit, as a future-looking thought experiment, but it was severely misleading given the circumstances. Desperate to move her family away from a block in Newark with increasing drug activity, Coleman signed away one type of risk for another.

 

For four uneventful years, the marsh near the bottom of her street was an attractive amenity, a place where her three young sons could play freely. Then the drainages that wrapped around her neighborhood like a wishbone were overwhelmed by a nor’easter in 2010. And by Hurricane Irene in 2011. And again, by Sandy, in 2012.[...]

 

If interested, please read the entire (long) article < here >.

[Dushyantsinh Chavda]

Very very bad mood of the NATURE!  Buzzing alarm clock ,  but Human is in deep sleep! 

[jbleck]

14 hours ago, tao said:

Coastal communities struggling to adapt to climate change are beginning to do what was once unthinkable: retreat

"too good to be true" - this is just that... they purchased what they thought was a "lottery winner" almost... don't start whining once u see the true reason behind the deal because no one will listen or care.

 

12 hours ago, Dushyantsinh Chavda said:

Human is in deep sleep!

hmm.. this is a BAD example on why u claim such a thing... the world doesn't spin around u and help, € or even compassion will fail to appear for such cases.

[luisam]

16 hours ago, tao said:

She discovered that parts of her neighborhood, like many chunks of this region, were developed atop low-lying wetlands, which had been elevated with poorly draining “fill” back around the early 20th century. As Coleman researched more deeply, a bigger picture emerged. “I started to realize that, in a sense, we were victims of a system because we were living in a neighborhood that should have never been built,” she says.

 

According to this description, the main issue is NOT climate change. It's urban developement of an area which basically should not be inhabited. There are too many inhabited areas in the floodplain of rivers or coastal areas direcly exposed to hurricanes and storms.  So, don't blame Irene, Sandy, Katrina, etc... but the city planifiers who built at vulnerable sites, like those who developed New Orleans below the level of the Mississippi and then pretended to protect it with levees!

[Dushyantsinh Chavda]

I say only one thing, Care Nature. Forgive me if my comment hurt anyone [by my ignorance?] 

Be happy with your thoughts, forget my comment, please?