Boston plans for 'near-term risk' of rising tides

Monica Brady-Myerov in KUHF FM News: In Boston, scientists are predicting that climate change will lead to dramatic sea level rise, and more frequent flooding, around the city. Officials are studying the potential impact on roads and sewers and are asking waterfront developers to plan for increased flooding. While many cities around the country grapple with drought and excessive heat this year, city planners in Boston have something else on their minds: the prospect of rising water.

In this coastal metropolis, scientists and computer models predict that climate change could eventually lead to dramatic increases in sea level around the city. Coupled with a storm surge at high tide, parts of the city could easily end up under water.

The area that's home to Boston's Faneuil Hall, the city's first public market, is one of them. The land the hall was built on was once waterfront property, but by the late 1800s, the growing city needed more room. So the marshes and mudflats along the wharf were filled in - and the city expanded.

"Now, today, more than 50 percent of downtown Boston is filled tidelands," says Jim Hunt, Boston's chief of environmental and energy services. Hunt helped Boston create a comprehensive climate action plan. It focuses both on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and on adapting to the dangers of a warmer climate such as heat waves, storms and the rising sea.

...Regardless of the ongoing national debate about climate change, Boston is calling the projected sea level rise a near-term risk. Projections range from 2 to 6 feet here by the end of the century, depending on how fast polar ice melts. Add to that a hurricane storm surge, and some models show parts of Boston under 10 feet of water. Researchers have told the city that by 2050, that could happen as often as every two to three years....

A view of the Charles River basin showing Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts and the Longfellow and Harvard Bridges. The Massachusetts State House is lower right and MIT lines the far side of the basin, shot by ArnoldReinhold, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

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

Defending Boston from the sea

Drake Bennett in the Boston Globe: …[W]hen Boston’s planning visionaries think about the future, increasingly, it’s the sea they’re worried about. Huge swaths of the city are on landfill, just a few feet above sea level, and as ocean levels rise in the coming decades — as most earth scientists project they will — Boston faces the prospect of an ocean that is higher and more dangerous than the one it has long known. So-called 500-year floods — freak meteorological events of extreme destructive power, now expected only twice a millennium — will become 100-year floods, and 100-year floods will become 20-year floods.

The specter of rising seas has long been invoked by environmentalists as a kind of warning, to spur action on climate change. But in recent years, a growing chorus of planners and scientists have begun talking about higher sea levels not as some cautionary scenario, but as a fact of life — one that everyone who lives near the ocean, whatever his views on the climate, needs to prepare for.

What does Boston need to do? Architects, city officials, insurers, and engineers have begun to lay the groundwork for a new version of the city, one prepared to keep pace with rising tides. In the past few years, the conversation has gained momentum, with meetings in City Hall, academic conferences on the topic, and a widely discussed article in the current issue of the journal ArchitectureBoston.

The ideas run the gamut from basic infrastructure fixes — raising the entrances to the city’s subway and highway tunnels, or moving electrical equipment out of downtown basements and onto the roofs — to zoning changes that discourage construction in high-risk areas. And a pair of architects is proposing a megalithic building project that would completely reshape Boston Harbor, using massive sea gates that could swing shut to seal the city off from the most devastating storm surges.

“This isn’t just an environmental issue,” says James W. Hunt III, the city’s chief of environmental and energy services. He ticks off the agencies currently involved in the effort: the Boston Redevelopment Authority, the Mayor’s Office of Homeland Security, the office of Environmental and Energy Services, the transportation department, the public health commission…..

Boston harbor and East Boston from the State Street block, by John P. Soule (1827-1904)

Broken pipe cause water woes in Boston

Beth Daley and Michael Levenson in the Boston Globe: Engineers and welders successfully rejoined two huge water pipes inside a muddy crater early this morning, and state officials said they hope to restore clean water within days to 2 million residents of Greater Boston.

People in the city and 29 of its most populous suburbs, whose clean-water supply was cut off by a catastrophic and unprecedented pipe rupture, remained without clean tap water for a second day yesterday. The region braced for the start of school and the workweek today while still facing orders to boil any water used for drinking and cooking.

State officials said they were unable to explain exactly what caused the rupture in a collar helping to connect two major water pipes. House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo said he would convene hearings as soon as this week to probe the failure, and Attorney General Martha Coakley said she would review reports of price gouging by stores selling bottled water.

… The crisis began early Saturday, when the metal collar, which wrapped around a rubber gasket, ruptured in a pipe system that delivers water from the Quabbin Reservoir to Boston. The collar, along with millions of gallons of water, then washed into the nearby Charles River. … Laskey said the failure could have been caused by the design, construction, or installation of the collar. Officials did rule out one theory discussed early in the crisis: that a minor earthquake could have jolted the pipes.

The collar, a large version of a standard component used to connect pipes or pipe segments in many water systems locally and nationally, was installed seven years ago by Barletta Heavy Division of Canton, the same firm that is fixing it now. State officials said they asked the company to make the repairs because it knows the pipe system well, had a replacement collar available, and had heavy equipment near the scene….

Boston faces deep risk from sea level rise

Some local reaction to the WWF/Allianz report on impacts, from the Boston Globe: Brace yourself Boston: Sea level rise from climate change could jeopardize Hub assets worth $463 billion. A new report out by World Wildlife Fund and insurer Allianz warns that sea levels could rise along the U.S. coast a whopping 26 inches by 2050 as the world warms. That would place assets worth $7.4 trillion at risk along the US coast.

“With each new study the alarm bells become deafeningly clear that climate change will have devastating consequences for our economy and way of life,’’ said David Reed, senior vice president of policy at WWF. The report comes several weeks before the world’s nations meet in Copenhagen to work toward a binding agreement to lower greenhouse gases from power plants, cars, and factories that are warming the earth and causing sea levels to rise.

New scientific evidence shows that the pace of warming in some places is outstripping even dire projections….

For Boston, the lessons from Venice

Boston Globe: Upon arriving in Venice on assignment in the 1920s, the writer Robert Benchley cabled his editor: "Streets filled with water. Please advise." As climate change causes sea levels to rise, this lighthearted quip assumes a darker shading.

Boston and Venice are separated - or united - by an ocean. Both are seaports that reincarnated themselves when their shipping and manufacturing economies faltered. Venice has long suffered from storm surges that used to flood St. Mark's Square once every five years.

…In 1988, Boston architect Antonio DiMambro proposed an ingenious remedy: a flood-control structure from Deer Island to Long Island to close the mouth of Boston Harbor and protect Boston from storm surges and extreme high tides, while allowing navigation and normal tidal flow through a series of gates. An idea that 20 years ago seemed to float somewhere between visionary and delusional now seems prescient.

Rebuilding the country's decaying roads, bridges, and flood-control structures is now the subject of urgent national debate. At a time of extraordinary economic challenges, far-sighted policymakers recognize that one thing more expensive than undertaking new public works projects is not to undertake them. Like organisms, healthy cities must adapt to changes in their environment. Just as we catch our collective breath from finishing the Big Dig, we should be addressing the need to protect the investments countless people have made in the city's future by adapting it to inevitable climate change. This could include raising grade levels, creating reefs to absorb storm surges, or building a hard storm-surge barrier like the one proposed by DiMambro….

Spectacle Island (Boston Harbor), a drumlin topped by landfill. Shot by Doc Searls from Santa Barbara, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License