NYC flooded spectacularly today

What's the plan?

A heavy deluge landed on NYC this morning. Commuters couldn't commute. Students couldn't get to class. Subway tunnels streamed with cascades of water. Pipes couldn't drain, causing stormwater and sewage to cover streets and back up into basements. Flights couldn't fly. La Guardia's Terminal A flooded.

Schools flooded. Hoboken flooded. Chaos and misery were everywhere, as the ponderous, seemingly unending rainstorm sat above the city, dumping away.

That's climate change for you: storms are more intense and slower-moving, tides are higher, and the unthinkable—a great city unable to do its work—is happening before our eyes. 

The disruption all of this causes is only going to keep getting worse, of course, but perhaps the media attention to NYC—all those reporters stuck on subway platforms—will help nudge along the process of increasing our focus on adaptation. Of course we need to reduce GHG emissions as quickly as we can. At the same time, though, we have to recognize that the increased heat that is already in the world's oceans and trapped in the earth's atmosphere will continue to have major effects on human lives for centuries, even if we somehow stop emissions tomorrow.

Along these lines, it was good to see the White House release yesterday its National Climate Resilience Framework. I was particularly glad to see the final objective in the Framework: "Help communities become not only more resilient, but also more safe, healthy, equitable, and economically strong."

I watched the whole thing so you don’t have to. It was an aspirational day. Ali Zaidi, the National Climate Advisor, said "This chapter of our history we can write as a moment of rebirth and repair, of revitalization, of coming together, of the incredible power we have when we put our minds to the task." I was glad to hear Satya Rhodes-Conway, mayor of Madison, WI, talk about the need to "build and rebuild infrastructure and the built environment to be resilient to our changing climate and to climate disasters." She went on to say, "We have to do that with local expertise, with federal funding, with the smarts and innovation from academia and NGOs [and] with full support from the private sector." Finally, a whole-of-government approach to adaptation.

I  was impressed by Jennifer Jurado, the Chief Resilience Officer for Broward County, who hardly took a breath as she lined up the climate change challenges Broward County faces: Rising seas lifting groundwater tables and snarling drainage and water management systems. Rainfall intensification, coastal flooding, and a "26 inch rainfall event in April [2023] that caused 5 feet of flooding at our Fort Lauderdale Hollywood Airport, and communities saw two to three feet of standing water. Thousands of vehicles were lost." Remember that? 

Jurado also said that insurance is a huge problem for Broward County, where residents are already paying $8,000/year and more for standard homeowners insurance—which doesn't include flood insurance. She pointed out that coastal communities contribute hugely to the national economy ("altogether, what, 50% to the national GDP?") and said "We need to find places for people to affordably, safely, sustainably work and live." Jurado seemed to be suggesting that regional collaboration could keep coastal residents reasonably close while avoiding unduly risky areas for living.

The new Framework makes the point that people may need to move away from where they are: 

In some cases, helping communities thrive means supporting communities who may want to relocate away from places that climate change is rendering uninhabitable. ...  Supporting voluntary relocation of communities, neighborhoods, and families at severe risk of personal injury, property damage, or loss of livelihood who need and desire to move is sometimes the best or only strategy for meaningfully reducing that risk. Supporting community-driven relocation also means supporting receiving communities—the places where people may relocate to—such as by directing funding and capacity for social services or expediting development of additional affordable housing.

That's a useful start. Insurance can be useful for transferring risk, but the real answer is to reduce risk in the first place. Relocation can and should be on the table.

More good news on the planned relocation front came earlier this year from the Attorneys General of California, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, and Maryland, who all signed on to comments (p.39) requesting that the Biden administration's policies include coastal relocation:

To adequately address coastal resilience, the Committee should leverage federal funding to create a community scale coastal relocation grant program. This program should include funding for resident-centered advocacy services and community outreach to bolster equity in coastal buyouts. The Committee should additionally develop a coastal relocation strategy that incorporates input from Ocean Justice Communities and considers both short and long-term climate threats in coastal relocation efforts.

That's remarkable. Five states are asking the federal government to scale up coastal relocation. (H/T, Coastal Flood Resilience Project.)

Finally, as the NYC floodwaters recede, take a look at this WSJ story from Louisiana earlier this week: "The cost of living with intense storms is prompting some residents to consider leaving this already depopulating area west of New Orleans, which sits near sea level and has taken a pounding in recent years from a succession of floods and major storms." Ad hoc, unplanned, unsupported departures will create disruptions of their own, as coastal markets hit a rapidly accelerating insurance crunch (watch 2024-25 closely) and residents flee to places that are similarly unaffordable and ultimately inhospitable.

We can do better.