A new study released by the Union of Concerned Scientists shows that climate change is rapidly worsening tidal flooding and escalating risks to essential coastal infrastructure that millions of people depend on, and researchers said the results for North Carolina were “sobering.”
The study “Looming Deadlines for Coastal Resilience” shows that nearly 1,100 schools, post offices, fire stations, and other buildings along the U.S. coastline that are critical to communities would flood 12 times per year on average, or the equivalent of once a month, by 2050 if sea level flooding caused by climate change isn’t addressed aggressively.
Dr. Kristina Dahl is the principal climate scientist at UCS; she says the results for North Carolina are quite sobering.
"In the 2050 time frame, there are over 70 infrastructure assets in North Carolina that are at risk of this flooding and by the end of the century that rises to over 250,” she explained.
While the study doesn’t look at every building, Dahl said society depends on those like subsidized housing, wastewater treatment facilities, power plants, and hospitals reliably providing services, and if they are flooded even just once, it can be incredibly disruptive or even paralyzing to daily life.
"Some communities told us that what they consider critical is their local Dollar General, and for others it was their post office,” she said. “So, we tried to cut across a lot of those different categories with this study, but we didn't include things like residential housing aside from public and affordable housing, which we did include. And we didn't include things like local businesses.”
Dahl said the report shows that it’s not only places like New Bern, where flooding from Hurricane Florence caused the city $100 million in residential and commercial damages in 2018, or Okracoke Island, where inundation from Hurricane Dorian in 2019 significantly damaged 88 of 105 businesses, that will be impacted.
The North River and Laurel Road Volunteer Fire Department in Beaufort is at risk of flooding twice per year by 2050, as is the National Park Ranger Station at Cape Lookout National Seashore.
"There are communities up and down the coast of North Carolina that will be affected by this more disruptive flooding as sea level rises,” Dahl said, “It's not just the Outer Banks, for example, or not just some of the areas that have experienced flooding during hurricanes over the last several years. It's really a coast-wide problem.”
Public and affordable housing represents the single most at-risk category of infrastructure assets evaluated in this analysis. When Hurricane Florence hit New Bern more than five years ago, families had to be rescued from the Trent Court complex. The effort to rebuild one of the city’s largest public housing projects with money from FEMA has yet to get off the ground.
Public housing complexes in Fairfield and Columbia are at risk of flooding twice per year by 2050; Autumn Chase in New Bern and Kings Terrace in Morehead City could flood once every two weeks by that time.
And ENC communities that are at a socio-economic disadvantage could bear the brunt of the rising water and its aftermath.
"While up and down the coast of North Carolina people can expect to see more frequent disruptive flooding as sea level rises, not every community is going to be affected in the same way and throughout this study we see that communities that have been dealing with historical disadvantages due to racism or sources of pollution in their community are disproportionately exposed to this flooding,” Dahl said, “So, as we think about how to address it, we do need to be targeting resources to the communities that most need them.”
Energy infrastructure is also a concern, and the interactive map compiled for the study shows Plott Hound Solar power plant in New Bern could flood monthly, an electrical substation in Newport is at risk of flooding once every two weeks, and another substation in Atlantic Beach is at risk of flooding twice per year.
And beyond the cost factor, Dahl said such devastating flooding could leave people essentially stranded within their communities or enduring intolerable and even unlivable conditions – which could have a huge impact on their mental health.
"Even after the water recedes, there's damage that needs to be taken care of, and they're also really damaging to mental health. We know that when people experience flooding, even after the floodwaters receded, there's some trauma in having to deal with the consequences of it and there's a lot of fear about when it's going to happen again,” she said.
The purpose of the study is to urge local leaders in eastern North Carolina and all along the U.S. coastline to prioritize those critical facilities that are at risk before it’s too late to act.
Dahl said, "Our study is really intended to be a first step for communities to see what the infrastructure that's at risk in their area is, and with that, we hope that communities can do more detailed, more localized vulnerability studies to really get at and pinpoint even more finely where those risks are.”
And the next important piece of the puzzle is to urge the federal government to fund the projects that will make America’s coastal communities more resilient to sea level rise, because, “A lot of the adaptations that will be needed for this infrastructure are going to be costly in the short term, but they will pay off in the long term in terms of reduced damages from high tides and storms. So, pushing the federal government to make these large investments in our coastal communities is an important piece of the puzzle, too.”
Dahl said one of the biggest solutions, however, is reducing heat-trapping emissions from burning fossil fuels.
“While the amount of sea level rise that we can expect between now and 2050 is largely locked in due to our past emissions of these gases like carbon dioxide, when we look at how much sea level rise we'll experience by 2100 in the second-half of the century, it's highly dependent on those choices we make today about our energy sources, how we power our cars, etc.,” she said.
The study shows North Carolina ranks seventh in 2050 for infrastructure at risk of disruptive flooding; in 2050, there are 30 communities with at-risk facilities and by 2100, it jumps to 57 communities.
The number of structures at risk of disruptive flooding is expected to nearly double by 2050 and increase sevenfold by 2100 compared to 2020.
