Activists warn of potential sea-level rise impacts in East Boston

Jeremy C. Fox in the Boston Globe: Some scientists believe climate change could cause Boston Harbor to overflow its banks and return parts of the city to the marshland it once was, but local activists hope an educated public can reduce the impact of rising sea levels and help protect vital resources and communities.

The issue is particularly pressing in East Boston now, given the proposals outlined by Mayor Thomas M. Menino last month that would encourage development along the neighborhood’s waterfront, an area that could one day be fully submerged beneath Boston Harbor. In Menino’s annual speech before the Boston Chamber of Commerce on Dec. 6, he cited five waterfront projects that stalled due to financing problems or other difficulties but that he hopes can be jumpstarted by municipal investments in the waterfront.

In a December phone interview, community activist Neenah Estrella-Luna cautioned that any new waterfront development has to be done with foresight. “One of my biggest concerns is how are they taking into account climate change in all of these waterfront development projects,” she said.

Estrella-Luna, who teaches public policy at local universities, is part of a group of educators, architects, and housing advocates who have come together through Common Boston, a volunteer committee of the Boston Society of Architects that works to address urban environmental issues.

She fears that proposed developments along the waterfront could ultimately become damaged by rising waters, making them undesirable as residences. Rather than market-rate units, they could be transformed into low-income housing, similar to what happened decades earlier at the Shore Plaza East apartments on Border Street, she said.

“I hate to say that, because [Shore Plaza East] has good people in it, but it's badly maintained,” she said. And because the complex was built just above the current sea level, she said, it already experiences flooding of its lower parking deck during heavy rains....

Spectacle Island (Boston Harbor), a drumlin topped by landfill. Shot by Doc Searls, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license