Miami Herald - No Way That Flood Control Systems From 50 Years Ago Can Stand Up To Rising Seas

[hatrack]

The way most Floridians will first feel the effects of sea-level rise probably won’t be from some catastrophic wave crashing over a sea wall. More likely, it will be flooding, the water covering your shoes, your street, your doorstep. Flooding is already heavier in South Florida. And it will get heavier still as the sea level continues its inexorable rise — gaining at least 2 feet by 2060 and rising faster after that, according to scientists’ mid-range projections.

Our main protection is a flood-control system built 50 to 70 years ago, long before climate change was even imagined. It’s clear that this aging system will need serious, and expensive, upgrades.

Congress has yet to provide the money for a much-needed study of how to do that. It’s galling that lawmakers gave the Northeast $20 million (Ed. - billion, I suspect) for a flood-control system after just one storm, Superstorm Sandy. Yet for all the hurricanes and tropical storms we’ve endured, Congress has yet to fund a flood-control study for our region that it authorized in 2016.

EDIT

When the SFWMD studied the problem in 2009, 20 flood control structures were deemed vulnerable if the sea level rises just half a foot — which is now expected in less than 15 years. A recent Florida Atlantic University study concluded that a half-foot rise would cripple about half of South Florida’s flood control capacity. We need a deeper, more current study. And Congress has authorized one. The 2016 Water Resources Development Act orders the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to study 10,000 miles of coastline along the south Atlantic and Gulf Coast “to identify the risks and vulnerabilities of those areas to increased hurricane and storm damage as a result of sea level rise.”

EDIT

http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article210596439.html

[greymattermom]

1. But where will the water go?

Will all of South Florida need dykes like in the Netherlands? If that's what's needed, there will be no beaches, and the population will decline. What will happen if the study shows that there is no solution, or that the solution is out of reach?

[hatrack]

2. Dikes/Gates like the Dutch have built won't work . . .

Much of Florida sits on a big spongy mat of limestone. The seawater will just seep through and under.

This is is probably a bigger immediate problem than some Atlantis scenario. As the sea penetrates the aquifer, drinking water systems will break down as wells become too brackish to drink, and though you can drill for water farther inland, the overall infiltration is not going to stop.

[Delphinus]

3. True.

I read The Water Will Come and got quite the education about the geology of Florida.