Adding to the woes of rising seas at Florida’s coasts will be the influx of people moving from South Florida to the Springs Heartland, including along the Santa Fe River. These are people for which there is no water nor infrastructure. Our springs and rivers are already significantly harmed and we need less water usage, not more.
Developers keep making homes and the water districts keep giving out pumping permits.
The northward movement has already begun, but it is nothing like it will be in a few years.
Our useless leaders today don’t raise their eyes to look forward beyond today and today’s profits. They have no care for their descendants who will bear the brunt of their folly.
Read the original article with photos here at WLRN
Comments by OSFR historian Jim Tatum.
jim.tatum@oursantaferiver.org
– A river is like a life: once taken,
it cannot be brought back © Jim Tatum
As storm flooding worsens, federal report finds Florida has the most to lose along SE Atlantic coast
In a final briefing on the four-year study by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers this week, Corps officials listed more than 200 recommendations to address the threats.
In Florida, they are asking Congress to authorize the design and construction on massive projects that fortify the coasts along Biscayne Bay and in Broward County, the Florida Keys and Key Biscayne. With the exception of Broward, which they say could entail more complicated coordination, they want that work to begin in less than five years.
The sprawling report, divided into appendices on each state and territory, also provides maps and data assessing the risks and the costs of flood threats made worse by a warming planet.
“This really allowed us to look at potentially high-risk places and stack and compare places by state to see which incorporated municipalities or towns or cities experienced a higher dollar damage,” said Trevor Lancaster, a Corps geographer. The survey look at costs due to flooding from storms or sea rise, he explained.
In Florida, they found that with three feet of sea rise, annual damages from storm surge alone could amount to $24 billion – 12 times higher than South Carolina, the next closest state.
Among the South Florida projects recommended and unveiled three years ago was a back bay plan for Biscayne Bay. The work would protect neighborhoods and cities that line their shores with flood walls or gates across coastal rivers, as well as other structures, and is expected to cost $4.6 billion.
The towering walls along the scenic bay and other hard infrastructure drew sharp criticism from Miami-Dade County officials and environmentalists, who want to include features like mangroves and seagrass meadows. In addition to buffering punishing waves from storm surge, these more natural defenses could also provide desperately needed wildlife habitat for Miami-Dade’s urban shoreline and help improve water quality.
If local communities object to such plans, the Corps allows them to come up with alternative proposals. A year ago, Miami-Dade asked for an extension, which was forwarded to the Assistant Secretary of the Army for approval. As of April, Corps officials said it was still under review. When asked about the plan, Miami-Dade resilience chief Jim Murley said that he expects to make an announcement this week….
In its analysis of increasing risk that identified about 490 locations statewide, Corps analysts found sea rise could have a much greater impact far inland, in places like Homestead. Corps officials also noted the growing risk, as South Florida’s population swells and development deepens in areas likely to flood.
“Increased population and development, without planning for resilience and adaptation to sea level rise, will further increase the substantial risk,” Corps officials noted in their report.
